“You can’t rescue a brother who needs to save himself.”
—Julia Cameron,The Artist’s Way
Category: SOBRIETY
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“The drink made past happy things contemporary with the present, as if they were still going on, contemporary even with the future as if they were about to happen again.”
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“Your mind is like an unsafe neighborhood; don’t go there alone,” explains Augusten Burroughs in Dry, his memoir about overcoming alcoholism. While therapy and coaching certainly makes braving “unsafe neighborhood” in our head easier, it can only go so far. It’s not like our therapist can actually climb inside our brain and evict all the bad guys. We can begin making the dangerous places in our mind safe again by choosing the right daily activities.
The Irresistible Introvert: Harness the Power of Quiet Charisma in a Loud World
Michaela Chung -
David Foster Wallace: …and I felt stuck. And it’s not like I felt stuck because I drank, okay? It was like I felt my life was over at 28, and I felt really bad. I did not want to feel that, and so I did all sorts of stuff. I would drink real heavy, I would fuck strangers. Sometimes I would not drink at all, not drink at all for two weeks, but instead, I would run 10 miles every morning in a desperate, like a very American ‘I will fix this somehow by taking radical actions’ sorta thing.
David Lipsky: And here you are promoting this acclaimed book. That’s not bad.
David Foster Wallace: [long sigh] David, this is nice. This is not real.
The End of the Tour (2015)
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It seems like a mistake of history that our species has such a casual fondness for what is actually a very hard drug. It’s only drinking’s popularity that makes it seem like a sane thing to do—fairly normal doses are enough to make people sway and stumble, say rude things, throw up, writhe in bed the next day, and often much worse. It’s addictive, expensive, frequently life-ruining. Even the kindest person in the world, having had enough alcohol, becomes awful to be around.
—David Cain, Goodbye Booze, For Now
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How is it possible for drunkenness to be such a worthwhile drug experience that I’d do a thousand times? Even if it was free, physiologically healthy and zero-calorie, the drug itself still represents a very questionable tradeoff in terms of mental faculties. For a few hours, you gain some relief from rumination and stress, and it’s easier to laugh and open up. But you lose a significant degree of what are probably the best human capacities: judgment, self-control, intelligence, basic awareness, and kindness.
—David Cain, Goodbye Booze, For Now
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“As God’s athlete, be sober: eternal life is at stake.”
—St. Ignatius of Antioch -
One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor-bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as ‘intemperate’ as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.
—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity -
I always remember an alcoholic friend who expressed to me his frustration at praying daily for God to remove his desire for drink. Was God even listening? Later it dawned on him that the desire for alcohol was the main reason he prayed so diligently. Persistent temptation had compelled persistent prayer.
Unanswered prayer: God, where are you?
SO GOOD QUOTES 