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For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.
Oct 2, 2025
Theodore Dalrymple is a brilliant observer of both medicine and society, and his book wittily engages with two versions of the current nonsense: orthodox medicine on drug addiction, and romantic poets on the wisdom you supposedly enjoy from getting high.
Smoking dope and smoking coke, you are rendered defenseless. The only way out of that hopeless state is intervention.
Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have drug addictions. You will not need alcohol. You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease. You will be free.
What has drug addiction done for me? It's cost me my career, my fortune and basically my sex life when I found out I was HIV positive.
We'd started out as a garage band and it became like a huge band, which was fine. But everything was so magnified, drug addictions, personalities, it just became too much.
My daughter, unfortunately, is ill, because drug addiction is an illness. She's been fighting it for years.
Another false philosophy that appeals to the Mr. Hyde side of our natures is that peeking into pornography is harmless. This is a terrible deception. Pornography is as addictive as cocaine or any illegal drug.
But I will say that the drugs are much more ferocious then they used to be. There are people wrecking their lives with addiction, which seems much more severe.
Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.
A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do.
I don't like people who take drugs... Customs men for example.
Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money.
Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Each generation has to stand up for democracy. It can't take anything for granted and may have to fight fundamental battles anew.
Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then... find the way.
People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.
The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help they have no hope.
Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew.
All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish.
Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.
I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say 'Hi, my name is Sam and I am an addict.'
Drugs are merely the most obvious form of addiction in our society. Drug addiction is one of the things that undermines traditional values.
I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.
Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.
Why is it that drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?
No man or woman is uniformly successful... we must all expect a rather high percentage of failure in the things we attempt.
I tried marijuana once. I did not inhale.
I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.
When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't.
A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture - in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.
Do not let your fire go out.
Life is very interesting... in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.
I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.
Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better
No, I'm not a drug addict, and neither is my husband. If that were so, you'd get a lot less work out of me. It would show in the performances and in the work.
It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing?
If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.
The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?
If I'd done a quarter of the things of which I'm accused, I'd be pickled in alcohol, I'd be a registered drug addict and would have sired half the children in the world's cricket-playing countries
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
In the US the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.
Another California study counted 30,000 substance abusers who are pregnant are White woman. So, The Wire paints the picture of drug addiction, drug dealing, and drug abuse as being a specifically a Black issue.