The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure Quotes

“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.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“At the bottom of every person's dependency, there is always pain, Discovering the pain and healing it is an essential step in ending dependency.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“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.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“People who believe they have bad luck create bad luck. Those who believe they are very fortunate, that the world is a generous place filled with trustworthy people, live in exactly that kind of world.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“If you examine your motive for doing anything, you'll soon discover that your reason is that you believe it will make you happy.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“I began asking myself just what my high was about. What did I do when I was high that I didn't do when I was sober? What was wrong that heroin fixed?”
― Pax Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“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.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can't stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, "The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking," but it isn't open to everyone. It's open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Treatment for dependency at substance abuse treatment centers must change if alcoholism and addiction are to be overcome in our society.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“It's the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. That's why I see the United States' War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing that causes that compel people to reach for drugs.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Heroin was a coping mechanism that I had used to deal with my underlying fears. They were the real problems; heroin wasn't the culprit, my fears were.”
― Pax Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“We recognize that you've used substances to try to regain your lost balance, to try to feel the way you did before the need arose to use addictive drugs or alcohol. We know that you use substances to alter your mood, to cover up your sadness, to ease your heartbreak, to lighten your stress load, to blur your painful memories, to escape your hurtful reality, or to make your unbearable days or nights bearable.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“I spent the rest of that day and most of the night thinking about all the hundreds of people I had met in rehabs and sober living houses and on the streets. We were all medicating our fears and our pain!”
― Pax Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“There is no cell culture for depression. You can't see it on a bone scan or an x-ray. Not everyone with depression will show the same behavioral symptoms.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating "alcoholism" as if it is the problem, when it has nothing to do with the problem. They might as well be studying "scratchism" for people who have a chronic itch.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“I wrote this book to show you that a cure is entirely possible because I've seen it happen over and over again.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“...there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that "Relapse is part of recovery." It's another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission to relapse because that think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Depression can be due to a low endocrine function, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar problems, food allergies, or systemic yeast infection. Depression can also result from medical illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, cancer, Parkinson's disease, and hormonal disorder. It can also be caused by a serious loss, a difficult relationship, a financial problem, or any stressful, unwelcome life change.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“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.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“It takes a strong person to stand up to his or her fate and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of freedom and success, but I believe in you.”
― Pax Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“The advertise their products in such a fashion as to make it seem wonderful to drink their ethanol products. It does not matter if they give their products fancy name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, or if they put bubbles in an ethanol product and call it champagne or beer- everyone is selling ethanol.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“We know that you don't want to be a drunk and you don't want to be hooked on addictive drugs. You do it because you can't cope with your life without some sort of support, even if that support is damaging.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“One of the first actions we take at Passages is to ruthlessly scrutinize, always under a doctor's supervision and care, the specific necessity of any mind- altering or mood-altering medications that our clients are taking. As soon as any non essential drugs are out of their systems, the feelings they were trying to suppress usually emerge. When that happens, we can see what symptoms the client was masking with drugs or alcohol.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“To give up power to change for the better is inherently distasteful to everyone, and to force people to affirm that they are addicts or alcoholics so they can speak in a meeting is shameful and demoralizing.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“A patient complains of feeling nervous or fearful. These feelings and behaviors suggest that the patient has an anxiety disorder, and the doctor prescribes whatever drug will most probably work for an anxiety disorder. However, there's no conclusive way to tell that this patient definitely has an anxiety disorder. Even if the doctor did get the diagnosis correct, there's a great deal of variation regarding which drug class (for example, anti-anxiety drugs versus antidepressants) a particular individual will respond to and which drug within a class (for example, Prozac versus Zoloft) will work best. If the drug doesn't work, the doctor will try the next one on the list and so on, thus delaying treatment success and complicating the process with the mix-and-match type of treatment.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“If those underlying conditions aren't treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we'll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That's the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent of alcohol and addictive drugs. It has little to do with alcohol and addiction themselves and almost everything to do with the original causes that created the dependency.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery

“Believe that is cure is possible for you. Discover and heal the underlying causes with a holistic recovery program. Adopt a philosophy based on what is true in the Universe.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A Holistic Approach to Total Recovery