quotations about alcoholism
Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar.
WILLA CATHER
"On the Divide", The Troll Garden
The point in regard to alcohol is simple enough. It is a poison, and a poison which, like other poisons, has certain uses; but the limitations in the use of alcohol should be as strict as the limitations in the use of any other kind of poison. Moreover, it is an insidious poison in that it produces effects which seem to have only one antidote--alcohol again.
ALEXANDER ALISON
"Why I am a Total Abstainer"
Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
He that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS
The Big Book
I can firmly say that alcohol is a drug that far too often eclipses the natural greatness of people both inside and outside of the limelight. One day, the 'life and sole of the party' no longer goes to parties. The medicine we took to be social, becomes the poison that isolates us at home. The alcoholic who used drink to balancing his fears and his moods, now struggles to raise even a smile when drinking. The light goes out behind the eyes and eventually, it goes out permanently.
IVAN MASSOW
"Alcoholism is a Disease That Tells You That You Haven't Got a Problem", Huffington Post, August 6, 2015
Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal.
JACK LONDON
John Barleycorn
I woke and my world shifted. I realized that I had written a suicide note while in a black-out drunk and a cold, dark knowing hit my soul. I knew that I didn't know myself anymore.
SOBER JULIE
"8 Years Sober!!", Sober Julie, February 6, 2018
While there's no question alcoholism is a disease, often passed on through families, its causes are as far ranging as the devastation to the lives of those who fall in its path. But experts and alcoholics agree on one thing about women who suffer the addiction: their recipe for disaster is greater than the male alcoholic's and their shame prevents too many from seeking help. For many of them, drinking is often the symptom of greater tragedies -- abuse at the hands of family or husbands, severe depression and, often, eating disorders. And more women than men become cross-addicted to prescription pills such as Valium. But the single link is their sense of self worth -- they don't have any.
BARB SWEET
"Women and alcoholism", The Telegram, February 26, 2016
Scientists announced that they have located the gene for alcoholism. Scientists say they found it at a party, talking way too loudly.
CONAN O'BRIEN
Some teenagers are reportedly drinking hand sanitizer to get drunk. Remember when Zima was the most embarrassing thing to drink? Teenagers have been turning up with alcohol poisoning and officials are worried it will become a national trend. Drinking hand sanitizer is of particular concern because Purell is considered to be a gateway soap. Purell could lead to lime cascade or scrubbing bubbles. The kids use salt to separate the alcohol from the sanitizer, which makes a liquid similar to a hard shot of liquor. You know what else is similar to a shot of hard liquor? A shot of hard liquor. Why not just steal a shot of liquor from your parent's liquor cabinet and refill it with iced tea like normal American kids, or pay a homeless guy to buy it for you like our forefathers did?
JIMMY KIMMEL
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Apr. 24, 2012
Even the fact that alcoholism is now considered by many mental health professionals and employers to be a genuine disability is nothing but an insult to the disabled. Obviously, nobody chooses to become an addict. But there is still no comparison between someone who was born with a disability or has suffered a life-changing physical trauma and someone who has allowed their appetites to get the better of them.
IAN O'DOHERTY
"It's time to accept that alcoholism is not a disease", The Independent, February 7, 2016
The fertile earth imbibes the rain;
The trees her moisture drink again;
The swelling ocean drinks the gales,
From him the thirsty sun exhales:
The moon, as thirsty, copious streams
Insatiate drinks of solar beams.
In drinking, then, since all agree,
What friend can justly censure me?
ANACREON
Ode XIX, Odes
An alcoholic is anyone you don't like who drinks more than you do.
DYLAN THOMAS
attributed, Wit
It is a deep insecurity and the alcohol itself is the medicine to that insecurity. Alcohol makes us funny at parties, a better conversationalist over dinner, naughtier in bed and without it most alcoholics are easily identifiable because they simply don't know how to operate. It is commonly believed that the pressures of fame turn people into alcoholics but this is completely untrue, alcoholics seek fame because it is yet another drug.
IVAN MASSOW
"Alcoholism is a Disease That Tells You That You Haven't Got a Problem", Huffington Post, August 6, 2015
I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Treasure Island
Where Drunkenness reigns, there Reason is an exile, virtue a stranger, God an enemy, blasphemy is wit, Oaths are rhetoric, and secrets are proclamations.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to his rapacity?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, Feb. 22, 1842
An aching head and trembling limbs, which are the inevitable effects of drinking, disincline the hands from work.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Thomas Green, Mar. 31, 1789
Alcoholism is a problem in our country, but it doesn't mean the government should shut down liquor stores.
BUCKY GLEASON
"Looking for a safe bet? Take gamblers calling this man after Super Bowl", Buffalo News, February 2, 2017