quotations about addiction
Addiction is addiction is addiction.
NORA VOLKOW
attributed, "Drug Czar: Treating Substance Abuse as a Crime is 'Inhumane'", PBS, February 23, 2016
Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences to the addicted individual and to those around him or her. Although the initial decision to take drugs is voluntary for most people, the brain changes that occur over time challenge an addicted person's self-control and hamper his or her ability to resist intense impulses to take drugs.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE
"DrugFacts: Understanding Drug Abuse and Addiction"
Addiction is a disease like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, lupus or other disorders and needs to be talked about and treated as such.
DEB WUETHRICH
"Community breakfast series speakers at Olean General say addiction is not a choice", Olean Times Herald, September 8, 2016
Let's blame addiction on brain chemistry and the brain's pleasure center with its master hormone called dopamine. A powerful surge of dopamine not only contributes to the pleasure we experience but is also linked to remembering the pleasure and learning to want more of it. Recovery entails relearning pleasure and how to have fun; finding new rewards that are healthier and for many, rewards that are legal. The purpose of recovery from an addiction is not just living in deprivation, lacking all joy and pleasure. No! Recovery is a matter of rediscovering a new life and a new way of living that feels "clean."
MICHAEL SCHOENHOFER
"Lima in Black and White: Addiction creeps up on many; there is help", The Lima News, February 4, 2016
All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.
W. H. AUDEN
A Certain World
A good addiction is a contradiction in terms. Anything people can't give up or must have is not healthy, no matter what the activity.
JODY DEAN
"Exercise Addiction", Orange Coast Magazine, Apr. 1990
Once we understand that addiction is neither a sin nor a progressive disease, just different brain wiring, we can stop persisting in policies that don't work, and start teaching recovery. Indeed, if the compulsive drive that sustains addiction is directed into healthier channels, this type of wiring can be a benefit, not just a disability. After all, persisting despite rejection didn't only lead to addiction for me -- it has also been indispensable to my survival as a writer. The ability to persevere is an asset: People with addiction just need to learn how to redirect it.
MAIA SZALAVITZ
"Can you get over an addiction?", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 14, 2016
Addiction is a beast, and it's growing sharper teeth.
REBEKAH M. YEAROUT
"Federal response to addiction is maddening", The Clarksdale Press Register, September 2, 2016
The road to addiction is typically sure and swift.
BILLIE OWENS
"'Pay Attention': The opioid addiction epidemic is right here, right now", The Batavian, March 1, 2016
America's drug crisis, which now kills more people each day than car crashes or gun violence, has challenged the conventional wisdom about recovery. With addiction inside the homes of families who thought themselves immune, we are starting to embrace the idea that addiction is a not a character flaw but a chronic disease requiring long-term management.
TINA ROSENBERG
"Medicines to Keep Addiction Away", New York Times, February 16, 2016
One of the most important things to understand is the fallacy that addiction is the result of bad parenting, poor moral standards or lack of self-control. Addiction is a disease. By definition, a disease is an incorrectly functioning organ that interrupts or modifies the performance of the vital functions. With addiction, the brain is the primary organ affected.
LORRI IRRGANG
"Shift the Focus: Is addiction biology or psychology?", Cecil Daily, August 19, 2016
Addiction is everywhere. It has no walls. It bleeds across every socioeconomic class.
OLIVIA MULLIN
attributed, "Healing Housing aims to ease women in addiction recovery back to healthy lives", Brentwood Home Page, January 22, 2017
If people can live with an addiction for any amount of time, they're so much more capable than that. There's so much skill that goes into maintaining an addiction, so much resilience to not dying, and being functional and just getting through life when you're living in a very hard place.
JULIE BATES-MAVES
"Why Addiction Keeps People On A 'Road Of Pain'", WisContext, September 8, 2016
I knew what caused addiction ... we all do. As a culture, we have a story about how addiction works, and it's a good one. It says that some substances are so chemically powerful that if you use them enough, they will hijack your brain. They will change your neuro-chemistry. They will give you a brain disease. After that, you will need the drug physically. So if you or I or the next ten people you pass on the street were to use an addictive drug every day for the next month, on day thirty, we'd all be addicts. Addiction, then, is the result of repeated exposure to certain very powerful chemicals. When I looked at the people I love who have become addicts, that is what I believed had happened to them.
JOHANN HARI
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
Here's the bottom line: Addiction is a constantly shifting cultural concept, not a biological entity.
STANTON PEELE
"Which Is More Addictive, Coffee or Nicotine? If You're Asking, You Can't Understand the Answer", Alternet, September 2, 2016
The definition of addiction as a disease, endorsed by the medical and scientific communities and most Western governments, may be the most powerful tool for the rehab industry.
MARC LEWIS
The Biology of Desire
Addiction is a disease, not a crime.
NICOLE HARTER
"Addiction is a disease, not a crime", The MetroWest Daily News, February 15, 2016
Addiction is a brain disease, a chronic disease that needs to be managed as we would manage any other chronic disease. It's a disease that desperately needs better pre-clinical models and more information about molecules and neural circuits. That's one thing that excites me ... the opportunity to bring labs across campus together to target addiction.
DANNY WINDER
"New center at Vanderbilt to focus on addiction research", Lebanon Democrat, September 7, 2016
Addiction is physical and mental, which takes over your mind and body. The person must be healed from the inside out.
JEFF CLINE
"Addiction is internal disease", Tribune Chronicle, January 24, 2017
An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.
CRISS JAMI
Venus in Arms