Quotations are usually popular on the internet because they reinforce the way we already feel about something or our view of the world.
But addiction recovery quotes mean much more to the recovering alcoholic.
40 - 60% of all recovering alcoholics will relapse at some point, studies show. Two-thirds of those will do so within the first year. After five years even 7% will relapse.
Inspirational quotes can help us feel that our struggle and even our feelings are not unique They are eternal and can be shared by just about everyone.
Here are 17 quotes that prove it.
Addiction Recovery Quotes About: The Mind
1. "The most common way people give up power is by thinking they don’t have any." -- Alice Walker
2. “Most substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.” -- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
3. "Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again." -- Shane Niemeyer
4. "We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Addiction Recovery Quotes About: The Self
5. "We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves -- the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kind -- never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake." -- Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living
6. "It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure." -- Joseph Campbell
7. "Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now high time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery. " -- Marcus Aurelius
8. "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Addiction Recovery Quotes About: The Process
9. "It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well." -- Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
10. "Hero is not a noun, it's a verb." -- Robert Downey, Jr.
11. "The way it works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless of, and you get the courage after you do it, not before you do it."
"That's a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around."
"I know. That's the way it works." -- George Clooney and Spike Jonze, Three Kings
12. "When I look back, I see why these vicious cycles can develop in someone who's been sober for a long time and then relapses and doesn't want to stay out there using, doesn't want to die, but isn't taking the full measure to get well again. There's a concept in recovery that says 'Half-measures avail us nothing.' When you have a disease, you can't take half the process of getting well and think you're going to get half well; you do half the process of getting well, you're not going to get well at all, and you'll go back to where you came from. Without a thorough transformation, you're the same guy, and the same guy does the same shit. I kept half-measuring it, thinking I was going to at least get something out of this deal, and I kept getting nothing out of it." -- Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
13. "The best way out is always through." – Robert Frost
Addiction Recovery Quotes About: Recovery
14. "With boundaries, it comes down to this, that you don’t support the illness, you support recovery." -- Christopher Kennedy Lawford
15. “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” -- Charlotte Whitton
16. "I really mean when I say my biggest fear in early recovery was that I would never have fun again. The beautiful truth is that recovery has given me freedom and the confidence to go out in the world and leave my own mark." – Tom Stoddart
17. "Suffering is unnecessary. But, one has to suffer before he is able to realize that this is so. It is only then, moreover, that the true significance of human suffering becomes clear. At the last desperate moment -- when one can suffer no more! --something happens which is the nature of a miracle. The great wound which was draining the blood of life closes up, the organism blossoms like a rose. One is free at last... with a yearning for ever more freedom, ever more bliss. The tree of life is kept alive not by tears but the knowledge that freedom is real and everlasting.” - Henry Miller
Realize that the whole process of your addiction and recovery is one that taps into mankind's oldest and most ingrained struggles.
When you may perceive as a flaw in your character or your personality may very well be just a catalyst for you becoming the person you were meant to be all along.
As you mark and celebrate the milestones in your sobriety, you can turn to addiction recovery quotes like these (or seek out your own) and realize that your struggles are universal.
Think of it as an AA meeting you hold in your mind, with all of humanity.
How many of these quotes did you find inspiring? Let us know in the comments section below!