words of wisdom

“Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with whatever we can find … It is disconnection that drives addiction.”
Christopher Kennedy Lawford

“Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable.”
R.D. Laing

“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”
Dalai Lama XIV

“One who will not accept solitude, stillness and quiet recurring moments… is caught up in the wilderness of addictions; far removed from an original state of being and awareness. This is ‘dis-ease.”
T.F. Hodge

“Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.”
Robert Downey, Jr.

“My identity shifted when I got into recovery. That’s who I am now, and it actually gives me greater pleasure to have that identity than to be a musician or anything else, because it keeps me in a manageable size.”
Eric Clapton

“It is important to our healing that we sort out the belief systems we adopt; belief systems that were taught to us and because they are so full of lies, they lead to all kinds of depressions, addictions and other struggles while we try to cope with the manifestations of the problems instead of the roots of the problems.”
Darlene Ouimet

“[The] little-mentioned paradox of substance addiction is: once you are sufficiently enslaved by a substance to need to quit the substance in order to save your life, the enslaving substance has become so deeply important to you that you will all but lose your mind when it is taken away from you.”
David Foster Wallace

“Real hope combined with real action has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through.”
Jenni Schaefer

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
August Wilson