Quotessence
Home / Topics / Alcoholic Quotes

Alcoholic Quotes

Browse 57 quotes about Alcoholic.

Alcoholic Quotes

“By drinking, a boy acts like a man. After drinking, many a man acts like a boy.”

MenHumorActionQuotesGirlActorsWomenPartyActingBoysHumourDrinkQuoteDrinkingAddictionAlcoholBarsDrunkManBeerWomanMaturitySatireGirlsThought ProvokingMatureAphorismQuotationsAddictAlcoholicsActAphorismsMake You ThinkCocktailsImmatureHangoverSatiricalDrinkersImmaturityAlcoholics AnonymousActorBoyQuotationProvoke ThoughtMade Me ThinkAaBarAlcoholicPartiesCocktailActsDrunkenOrgyUnderage DrinkingUnderageDrinkerBeersOrgies
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“Like alcohol and poverty, a heartbreak has the power to make a man do something he wouldn’t normally do and to make a woman do someone she wouldn’t normally do.”

HumorFunnyPainHappinessMotivationSufferingSexWealthPoorMoneyPovertyRichSadnessHumourRegretSorrowSadDepressionWineSorryQuote Of The DayAlcoholHappyUnhappyBeerSatireUnhappinessWealthyAphorismAgonyRepentRemorseAlcoholismLiquorAphorismsDepressedBoozeAlcoholics AnonymousSpiritsQuoteofthedayAlcoholicSexual IntercourseWine TastingDepressIntoxicantIntoxicants
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“Bonnie was so drunk she could hardly walk. ... I had always felt sorry for her, having to live the life she was living, never a minute’s peace. She had often told me she was happier when she had something to drink. So I did not blame her for staying drunk most of the time, if it made her feel better.”

PainDepressionDrinkingDrunkAlcoholismDrunkennessDrinking AlcoholAlcoholicCoping MechanismBonnie And Clyde
Book:My Life with Bonnie and Clyde
Create image

“I am a drunk. It took me some time to know this. Here is how I know. How it’s always been is I don’t know how to talk or move or sleep or shit. I wake up mornings with my head in a vice. The only solution is to drink again. That makes me almost jolly. It does wonders in the morning to take my mind off the pain and pressure. I can use my eyes after the first drink, I remember how to line up my feet and walk, loosen my jaw, tell someone to get out of my way. Then I get tired. I whine and need to lie down. I lie down, I want a drink. I cannot sleep without having already forgotten my name, my face, my life. If I were to sit still or lie down in a room with some memory of myself – the time I have left to live out, that nasty sentence, that hell – I would go mad.”

PainEmptyAlcoholEmptinessDepressingAlcoholic
Book:McGlue
Create image

“One weekend it rained for 48 hours without stopping. The rain beat like bony fingers against the window panes. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Fungus was growing on the walls. I polished off a bottle of gin sitting huddled over the two-bar electric fire and wrote a poem, one of the few that has lasted through the moves and the years. It is called 'Where Can I Go?' If this is not the place where tears are understood where do I go to cry? If this is not the place where my spirits can take wing where do I go to fly? If this is not the place where my feelings can be heard where do I go to speak? If this is not the place where you’ll accept me as I am where can I go to be me? If this is not the place where I can try and learn and grow where can I go to laugh and cry?”

SadnessCryAcceptancePoemDepressionMental HealthRejectionLearnAlcoholismAnorexiaAlcoholicAnorexicAnoretic
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Create image

“And I was sure it was the drink that irrigated White’s self-sabotage, for it is the common trait of alcoholics to make plans and promises, to oneself, to others, fervently, sincerely, and in hope of redemption. Promises that are broken, again and again, through fear, through loss of nerve, through any number of things that hide that deep desire, at heart, to obliterate one’s broken self.”

RedemptionAlcoholismSabotageAlcoholic
Book:H is for Hawk
Create image

“Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change...A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing.”

Life LessonsChangeOwnershipAlcoholic
Book:Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward
Create image

“AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, "The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking," but it isn't open to everyone. It's open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”

EmpowermentAlcoholAlcoholismDrug AddictionAlcoholics AnonymousDrug AbuseAaAlcoholicAlcohol AbusePassages Malibu12 StepPassages VenturaAddiction CureAlcoholism Addiction RecoveryNon 12 StepPassages Rehab12 Step ProgramsNon 12 Step Programs
Book:The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery
Create image

“He was ready to take a pothead, alcoholic, heroin-addicted, whoremonger, a bulimic, cigarette smoking womanizer, and form the deepest type of bond that could be made and had no exit clauses or reversals. He had pursued me when others would’ve given up a thousand times. He made a covenant with me, signed by a pen dipped in His own blood, a covenant forged by His love, in His love, and through His love. It is a love story written by the Author of the universe.”

UniverseBloodHeroinAlcoholicWomanizerBulimicPothead
Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
Create image

“I ordered a third pint, skillfully avoiding eye contact with the barman when Ange arrived. It had been four months since I last saw her. Four months since she'd got the phone call from the police. I'd been gone a week, and had ended up under Waterloo Bridge, apparently trying to find a building site I thought I was managing. I'd been out of work for a year. Without a word she drove me to a cheap hotel in Worthing, a few miles from home. She'd already dumped my clothes inside. In the Green Man, Ange's blonde hair was longer than I remembered. I wanted to tell her she looked pretty but she curled her lip when she saw me, as if I smelt bad, and she didn't look pretty anymore.”

RelationshipsRegretDepressionHopelessnessAlcoholic
Book:If You Knew Her
Create image

“Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.”

ChildrenKidsDeathMotherFatherSexParentMistakeFamilyWineDrinkingAccidentsAlcoholDrivingMistakesDrunkParentsBeerAbortionParenthoodChildDeadInfantAlcoholismReproductionDrinking AlcoholCondomToddlerAlcoholics AnonymousAccidentProcreationCar AccidentKidContraceptivesAlcohol AddictionAbortion RightsAlcoholicAlcohol AbuseWine QuotesCondomsToddlersDrinking And DrivingInfantsAbortion QuotesWine HumorBeer QuotesAbortContraceptiveCar AccidentsBeersAbortionists
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“The only way to truly help most drug addicts and most alcoholics is to—instead of them—change reality.”

HelpingRealityReligionChangeDrugDepressionMurderSuicideAddictionAlcoholWeedHelpKillersDrugsAddictSuicidalEscapeAlcoholismKillEscapismDepressedDrug AddictRehabCannabisRehabilitationAlcoholics AnonymousHelpersAaKilledAlcoholicAddictsHelperDepressHelpedEscapesDrug AddictsSelf MurderMind AlteringMurderingRehabilitation CentersAlcohol FreeRehabilitation CenterRehabilitation CentreRehabilitation CentresRehabilitationsRehabsTake One S Own LifeTook One S Own Life
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am I seeking attention? Showing off? The pain of the cuts releases the mental pain of the memories, but the pain of healing lasts weeks. After every self-harming or overdosing incident I run the risk of being sectioned and returned to a psychiatric institution, a harrowing prospect I would not recommend to anyone. So, why do I do it? I don't. If I had power over the alters, I'd stop them. I don't have that power. When they are out, they're out. I experience blank spells and lose time, consciousness, dignity. If I, Alice Jamieson, wanted attention, I would have completed my PhD and started to climb the academic career ladder. Flaunting the label 'doctor' is more attention-grabbing that lying drained of hope in hospital with steri-strips up your arms and the vile taste of liquid charcoal absorbing the chemicals in your stomach. In most things we do, we anticipate some reward or payment. We study for status and to get better jobs; we work for money; our children are little mirrors of our social standing; the charity donation and trip to Oxfam make us feel good. Every kindness carries the potential gift of a responding kindness: you reap what you sow. There is no advantage in my harming myself; no reason for me to invent delusional memories of incest and ritual abuse. There is nothing to be gained in an A&E department.”

PainMemoriesHealingAttentionCuttingAbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaAlcoholMental IllnessPsychologicalSurvivorDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderIncestSelf HarmRitual AbusePsychiatricAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeOverdoseSplit PersonalityAlcoholicEmergencySuicide AttemptAlters
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Create image

“In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives with eyes hollower than those of suburban streetwalkers; music-hall chorus girls who tip creosote into their Roederer when getting drunk... I have even had the awkward androgynes, the unsexed dishes of the day of the *tables d'hote* of Montmartre. Like any vulgar follower of fashion, like any member of the herd, I have made love to bony and improbably slender little girls, frightened and macabre, spiced with carbolic and peppered with chlorotic make-up. Like an imbecile, I have believed in the mouths of prey and sacrificial victims. Like a simpleton, I have believed in the large lewd eyes of a ragged heap of sickly little creatures: alcoholic and cynical shop girls and whores. The profundity of their eyes and the mystery of their mouths... the jewellers of some and the manicurists of others furnish them with *eaux de toilette*, with soaps and rouges. And Fanny the etheromaniac, rising every morning for a measured dose of cola and coca, does not put ether only on her handkerchief. It is all fakery and self-advertisement - *truquage and battage*, as their vile argot has it. Their phosphorescent rottenness, their emaciated fervour, their Lesbian blight, their shop-sign vices set up to arouse their clients, to excite the perversity of young and old men alike in the sickness of perverse tastes! All of it can sparkle and catch fire only at the hour when the gas is lit in the corridors of the music-halls and the crude nickel-plated decor of the bars. Beneath the cerise three-ply collars of the night-prowlers, as beneath the bulging silks of the cyclist, the whole seductive display of passionate pallor, of knowing depravity, of exhausted and sensual anaemia - all the charm of spicy flowers celebrated in the writings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barres - is nothing but a role carefully learned and rehearsed a hundred times over. It is a chapter of the MANCHON DE FRANCINE read over and over again, swotted up and acted out by ingenious barnstormers, fully conscious of the squalid salacity of the male of the species, and knowledgeable in the means of starting up the broken-down engines of their customers. To think that I also have loved these maleficent and sick little beasts, these fake Primaveras, these discounted Jocondes, the whole hundred-franc stock-in-trade of Leonardos and Botticellis from the workshops of painters and the drinking-dens of aesthetes, these flowers mounted on a brass thread in Montparnasse and Levallois-Perret! And the odious and tiresome travesty - the corsetted torso slapped on top of heron's legs, painful to behold, the ugly features primed by boulevard boxes, the fake Dresden of Nina Grandiere retouched from a medicine bottle, complaining and spectral at the same time - of Mademoiselle Guilbert and her long black gloves!... Have I now had enough of the horror of this nightmare! How have I been able to tolerate it for so long? The fact is that I was then ignorant even of the nature of my sickness. It was latent in me, like a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. I have cherished it since... perhaps since early childhood, for it must always have been in me, although I did not know it!”

SexHorrorWomanNightmareRottenCocaineLesbianDecadenceDepravityVicePerversityAlcoholicMacabreMorphineDecadentDecadentsEtherMontmartreFervourPallorStreet WalkersAndrogyneAndrogynesChorus GirlsLevallois PerretMaurice BarresPaul Bourget
Book:Monsieur de Phocas
Create image

“When he was a kid, it used to feel like his parents disappeared when the got drunk. As the levels of their glasses went down, he could sense them pulling away from him, as if they were together on the same boat, slowly pulling away from the shore where Oliver was left stranded, still himself, still boring, sensible Oliver, and he'd think, Please don't go, stay here with me, because his real mother was funny and his real father was smart, but they always went. First his dad got stupid and his mum got giggly, and then his mum got nasty and his dad got angry, and so it went until there was no point staying and Oliver went to watch movies in his bedroom. He'd had his own VCR in his bedroom. He'd had a privileged upbringing, had never wanted for anything.”

AlcoholismAlcoholicAdult ChildrenAdult Children Of AlcoholicsAcoa
Book:Truly Madly Guilty
Create image

“Sometimes you'd just forget the truth like a language you haven't spoken in for years: when you would try again in a quiet hour, you'd only stutter and falter. You would make a fool of yourself and promise you wouldn't ever try again. But over one too many drinks you would be trying, anyway, which would be when fluently you’d speak languages you wouldn’t even know when sober. The truth that sober Tom had unlearned was turning him into an alcoholic. Constantly it kept coaxing him to drink, because he couldn't get it out any other way .”

TruthAddictionAlcoholTruth QuotesTruthsWasted LifeLying QuotesAlcoholicLies We Tell Ourselves
Book:As the moon began to rust
Create image

“Edwards knew that the constant spending and deliberate time-wasting was taking a toll. 'I know that if I get to the end of this year I'll have no dignity left at all,' he said. 'It's all gone. I live in a big fantasy world... It's sad.' He'd often end the day drinking even more to block out the world and allow him to get to sleep.”

SuicideMental IllnessAlcoholicSuicidalityFantasy WorldLoss Of DignityShopohlic
Book:A Version of Reason: In Search of Richey Edwards
Create image

“I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental IllnessTherapySurvivorAlcoholismDissociative Identity DisorderPsychiatristMultiple PersonalitiesSplit PersonalityAlcoholicMpdAltersMultiple Personality
Book:A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder
Create image

“Jeff’s’ father, Ethan Fortner, World War Two and Korean War hero, and one of the original agents of ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan’s post-war Central Intelligence Agency, sat in the chair before him. He had a tumbler of single-malt Scotch in his hand, and a Cuban cigar in the other. It was 1958, and his father was chastising him, again. Ethan Fortner was a patriot, and a legend in the intelligence community; but he was also a high functioning alcoholic and a bitter widower, ever since the day of Jeff’s birth.”

Fathers And SonsSpy ThrillerAlcoholicWidower
Book:The Edge of Reality
Create image

“Once at a meet and greet a smartass intellectual offered me a glass of alcohol, knowing quite well that I despise the stuff. He just wanted to piss me off - so, when I refused, he remarked in ridicule - 'what are you, some kind of sissy!' As always, with a smile on my face, I replied, 'may be - but more importantly, I am just the best role model you wish you could be to your children'.”

DrinkingHealthy LivingAlcoholismAlcoholicSober LivingAlcohol RehabDrunken BehaviourTeetotallerNonalcoholicTeetotaling
Book:The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo
Create image

“Alcohol is one of the quickest vehicles with which we escape shyness, our problems, and self-consciousness, for a few hours.”

ProblemPainSufferingAlcoholNervousShyProblemsRetiringVehicleEmbarrassedInsecureEscapeAlcoholismReservedShynessSelf ConsciousnessRepressedOpiumAlcoholics AnonymousIntrovertedAlcohol AddictionAlcoholicAlcohol AbuseBashfulTimidVehiclesWithdrawnDiffidentEvadeReticentSheepishSelf EffacingMousyInhibitedFaroucheOpium Of The PeopleTimorousUnconfident
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image