Recovery Quotes

This woman’s size protected herfrom the hurts of the worldbut it also imprisoned her soul. As the merry-go-round revolved, she ate another French fry,as a silent scream frozen on her face.

~ David W. Earle

There comes a time. The pain of existence transcends the fear of change. There comes a time.

~ Moshe Kasher

...patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism create, encourage, maintain, and perpetuate addiction and dependency. Patriarchy and hierarchy are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear. This fear is expressed by the dominators through control and violence, and in subordinated people through passivity and repression of anger. The external conflict of hierarchy between dominants and subordinates becomes internalized in individuals, creating personal inner chaos, anxiety and duality. To quell the inner conflict people resort to addictive substances and behavior.

~ Charlotte Davis Kasl

Gately can't even imagine what it would be like to be a sober and drug-free biker. It's like what would be the point. He imagines these people polishing the hell out of their leather and like playing a lot of really precise pool.

~ David Foster Wallace

I almost wish I had cancer. Then I’d either beat it or die from it. But my disease, even if successfully treated, will never go away. And it might not kill me. But it will hang over me like the blade of a guillotine; more threatening inert than if the blade suddenly slips and mercifully turns out my lights. This is my war to end all wars.

~ William Cope Moyers

Stop validating your victim mentality. Shake off your self-defeating drama and embrace your innate ability to recover and achieve.

~ Steve Maraboli

Given love and opportunity, every child and adult can recover. All who know this and have the capacity to help others should assist as they can.

~ Dallin H. Oaks

The unavoidable has touched the life of every human being on the face of the earth. Some have rebounded, others have given up--but all of us have felt the wings of tragedy brushing against us.

~ Paulo Coelho

Every great tragedy forms a fertile soil in which a great recovery can take root and blossom...but only if you plant the seeds.

~ Steve Maraboli

If I had to offer up a one sentence definition of addiction, I'd call it a form of mourning for the irrecoverable glories of the first time...addiction can show us what is deeply suspect about nostalgia. That drive to return to the past isn't an innocent one. It's about stopping your passage to the future, it's a symptom of fear of death, and the love of predictable experience. And the love of predictable experience, not the drug itself, is the major damage done to users.

~ Ann Marlowe

Somewhere in the distance I hear the bucket clatter to the floor. I plunge the knife into his head, again and again. His arms lash out blindly, getting in the way. Blood mixes with water cascading to the floor. Meathead staggers to his feet, pulling off his shirt, trying to peel away the agony, but his skin comes away with it, leaving a raw, red mess.There’s a shrill alarm and the sound of pounding feet. I hurl the knife through the bars at the window. A blur of dark faces converge in my vision, fists and feet, punching and kicking. Meathead’s mates are yanking me off, trying to hurt me. Screws come rushing and soon they’re everywhere as I’m half-carried, half-dragged along the corridor. ‘Blimey,’ a thought comes from somewhere in all the chaos, ‘I’ve only been out a day and already I’m heading straight back down the chokey!’ The last thing I see, as a screaming Meathead is hurried to the hospital, is my cellmate in the middle of the crowd peering worriedly after me. Course he’s worried! The stinky bastard is wondering where his next bit of scag is coming from!

~ Harry Shaw

Recovery doesn't mean putting your life on hold. Recovery means holding on so you can live your best life.

~ Brittany Burgunder

I'm broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think I'll fall down and never rise again.

~ Anna White

I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.

~ Craig Ferguson

It’s about needing to feel loved and comforted but feeling unworthy of real love and comfort. It’s about hating having needs and desires. For some of us, needs make us feel greedy and selfish. For some of us, having needs means we can easily get hurt if those needs are not met. For some of us, we don’t believe we deserve to have our needs met. We try to convince ourselves that we don’t need anything by avoiding food, one of our greatest primal needs.

~ Emma Mcevoy

Nature paces its change in gradual steps, and in this time of renewal, I danced in sync to the rhythm of life.

~ Lynn C. Tolson

Boundaries are, in simple terms, the recognition of personal space.

~ Asa Don Brown

Is it bad to like the way the scars look on my skin? Oh, the way they feel under my hands. My body’s protecting itself, saying, “No, this barrier of scar tissue is to keep you out.

~ Taylor Rhodes

Giving saves lives. Especially the giver’s.

~ Shannon Kopp

The more judgmental a person is the sadder they are.

~ David W. Earle

Consider letting go of the barriers between yourself and others, let go of the definition our culture has inflicted upon us and allow the best part of ourselves to connect with the wondrous parts of others. Allow yourself to connect in a deeper and more profound way.

~ David W. Earle

When I learned about the gray existing between the black and white of absolute terms, I began to experience more peace. The more I expanded my gray areas (more than 50 shades), the more peace I experienced in my life.

~ David W. Earle

If one looks at a balancing scale putting “fear of change” on one side and “status quo” on the other, they are often in balance. Change is hard. We tend to accept our condition and no matter how painful, we will not change until the balancing scale is tipped - only when the discomfort becomes greater than the fear of change does the scale tip.

~ David W. Earle

Late one night, during a toss-and-turn fretful sleep, I pondered my crisis. No solutions were on the horizon. I, again, wasted my psychic energy with prayer. Nothing. No angel on a white cloud. No rainbow’s pot of gold. No way to control the people I loved. As I rolled over and put the pillow over my head attempting to block all that was negative, I silently screamed for rescue. Then, in a far away and distinct part of my brain, a small voice said, “You have to do this on your own.”I thought, “Was that the best You can do?” This god, to whom I was desperately sending burnt offerings of my own humiliation, couldn’t send an avenging angel or a wise man imparting wisdom? All You can give me is this feeble message of abandonment? At that moment, I quit believing in that god.

~ David W. Earle

It was His gentle voice who calledand sent His angel pain to guide me, through the long ‘n dusty corridors, and empty hallways of my soul.

~ David W. Earle

Recovering is a process of coming to experience a sense of self. More precisely, it is a process of learning to sense one's self, to attune to one's subjective physical, psychic, and social self- experience. These woman's core sense of shame and their difficulty tolerating painful emotions had led them to avoid turning their attention inward to their internal sense of things. In recovering, they came to their senses and learned to trust their sensed experience, in particular their sense of enoughness.

~ Sheila M. Reindl

Only love can neutralize shame.

~ Omar Manejwala

Every morning, whether I've slept or not, whether I've made it through the day without crying or given in and sobbed in the shower, where no one can hear me― the sun comes up, and I make my choice.

~ Robin York

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March..........I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.I am thawing.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy...

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town

~ Anne Lamott

Recovery feels like shit. It didn't feel like I was doing something good, it felt like I was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again.

~ Portia De Rossi

The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope.

~ Russell Brand

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.

~ Mark Twain

Your best days are ahead of you. The movie starts when the guy gets sober and puts his life back together, it doesn't end there.

~ Bucky Sinister

I'm learning how to taste everything.

~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

~ Craig Ferguson

One day at a time, sweet Jesus. Whoever wrote that one hadn’t a clue. A day is a fuckin’ eternity

~ Roddy Doyle

Real hope combined with real action has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through.

~ Jenni Schaefer

It's crazy, how similar we are. Here's both of us, working through our stuff, trying to make something positive out of something really bad.

~ Jenny Han