d10c19c
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"The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are "those people." The truth is...we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being "those people"-the ones we don't trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don't let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don't want living next door."
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addiction
divorce
poverty
shame
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Brené Brown |
349fa56
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"This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each. Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime. There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful. If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love: To Gaylene deceased To Ray deceased To Francy permanent psychosis To Kathy permanent brain damage To Jim deceased To Val massive permanent brain damage To Nancy permanent psychosis To Joanne permanent brain damage To Maren deceased To Nick deceased To Terry deceased To Dennis deceased To Phil permanent pancreatic damage To Sue permanent vascular damage To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage . . . and so forth. In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy."
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addiction
drug-addiction
drugs
health
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Philip K. Dick |
d7e31fd
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You are not an alcoholic or an addict. You are not incurably diseased. You have merely become dependent on substances or addictive behavior to cope with underlying conditions that you are now going to heal, at which time your dependency will cease completely and forever.
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addiction
addiction-cure
addiction-disease
addiction-treatment-center
alcohol-addiction
alcohol-addiction-treatment
alcohol-disease
alcohol-rehab
alcoholic
alcoholics-anonymous
alcoholism
alcoholism-addiction-recovery
chris-prentiss
dependency
depression
disease
drug-addiction
healing-addiction
inspiration
inspire
passages-malibu
passages-ventura
pax-prentiss
rehab
rehab-centers
self-help
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Chris Prentiss |
1063099
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When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy.
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addict
addiction
addicts
alcohol-abuse
alcohol-addiction
alcoholics
alcoholism
chris-prentiss
drug-abuse
drug-addiction
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Chris Prentiss |
6ef6822
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"Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life. The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances. I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances. It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve."
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addiction
addiction-and-recovery
alcoholics-anonymous
alcoholism
buddhism
na
narcotics-anonymous
oppression
recovery
secularism
sobriety
substance-abuse
trauma
xa
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Noah Levine |
6bea34d
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Every person in the AA program who's successful is living proof that he or she does have power over addictive drugs and alcohol- the power to stop.
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addiction
alcohol-addiction
alcoholics-anonymous
alcoholism
chris-prentiss
drug-abuse
drug-addiction
empowerment
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Chris Prentiss |
1b8b584
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The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.
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addict
addiction
alcoholics-anonymous
alcoholism
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James Frey |
2982823
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Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. That's a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease, a cause unto itself, simply no longer fits with what we know today about its causes.
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addiction
addiction-treatment
addictions-treatment-centers
alcohol-disease
alcoholism
change-the-world
chris-prentiss
confidence
cure-addiction
disease
healing
healing-abuse
healing-trauma
overcome-addiction
passages-malibu
passages-rehab
passages-ventura
pax-prentiss
rehab-centers
self-image
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Chris Prentiss |
12e2e4c
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Remember what I used to tel you when you were a little girl? 'A fool and her money soon part.' Current-day translation? Stop pissing away your assets at Bloomingdale's.
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addiction
bloomingdales
confession
money
shop
shopaholic
shopping
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Sophie Kinsella |
b3545ff
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Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude.
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addiction
addiction-cure
addiction-treatment
alcoholics-anonymous
challenge
change
chris-prentiss
opportunity
reading
writing
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Chris Prentiss |
6b23c21
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The punishment approach and bad consequences approach to treatment is the kind of thinking that is prevalent in every residential substance abuse treatment center in the United States of which I'm aware.
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addiction
alcohol-rehab
alcohol-treatment-center
chris-prenitss
depression
drug-abuse
drug-rehab
drug-rehab-center
non-12-step
pax-prentiss
substance-abuse
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Chris Prentiss |