Drug Addiction Recovery Quotes

“The reality is that there are plenty of trustworthy people in the world rebuilding their lives. It was a very gradual process for me to open up and talk about what was really going on in my recovery. The more I started to take risks by talking to others, however, the more I had an opportunity to exercise boundaries. As I asserted new boundaries, I started to gravitate towards people with integrity, warmheartedness and decency.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“We did not come into this world loathing ourselves or wishing to numb or feelings. As small children, we operated from a place of wonder, curiosity, spontaneity and creativity.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Emotionally wounded addicts have an extremely difficult time with intimacy and with trusting themselves and others. They have a deep desire to trust, but their emotional scars and traumatic memories haunt them whenever an opportunity to trust another person arises. Naturally this can lead to a very lonely existence.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“People pleasing and putting others first literally diminished my mental, emotional, spiritual and physical well-being. Overwhelmingly, most emotionally wounded people demonstrate this trait. Many of us have been programmed to put others first; to be of service to others before we serve ourselves.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“It has been said that bereavement is a state of loss and grief is a response to loss. To grieve is a natural and healthy response to our losses. It is nature’s way of letting us heal and open ourselves up to a new chapter in our lives.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Understanding why we are afraid to grieve is a prelude to transforming our lives. Getting in touch with our deepest fears and airing them in a safe space can be incredibly liberating.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Spiritual and emotional recovery are possible because the human brain is a living organ that we can transform by making new choices and being in non-shaming recovery-based environments.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Being able to be aware that we have thoughts, but that we are not our thoughts, is a major breakthrough for people seeking emotional health and spiritual wellbeing.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Shame attacks can be triggered by the most unremarkable events. We might smell a scent that subconsciously reminds the body of a shameful or traumatic event.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“In 2017, I was invited to lead a mindfulness workshop and guide a live meditation on Mingus Mountain, Arizona, to over 100 men and women at a recovery retreat. On the eve of my workshop, I had the opportunity to join in a men's twelve-step meeting, which took place by the campfire in Prescott National Park Forest, with at least 40 men recovering from childhood grief and trauma. The meeting grounded us in what was a large retreat with many unfamiliar faces. I was the only mixed-race Brit, surrounded by mostly white middle-class American men (baby boomers and Generation X), yet our common bond of validating each other's wounds in recovery utterly transcended any differences of nationality, race and heritage. We shared our pain and hope in a non-shaming environment, listening and allowing every man to have his say without interruption. At the end of the meeting we stood up in a large circle and recited the serenity prayer:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me".

After the meeting closed, I felt that I belonged and I was enthusiastic about the retreat, even though I was thousands of miles away from England.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“While excellence is a wonderful ideal, perfectionism is a dysfunctional belief system. Many people openly admit that they are perfectionists, which is really an unconscious cry for help. Being a perfectionist is really stating that whatever we attempt to do will never be good enough. This is due to a mistaken belief that we are flawed and unlovable.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Many people in recovery find that they feel spiritually grounded when in regular contact with the great outdoors. Others feel a deep serenity after lighting a candle in a church or temple or by chanting a sacred mantra. The point is that, unlike a typical religion that lays out a non-negotiable ideology, spirituality is expansive and deeply personal.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Compulsively saying "Sorry" is often a reflection of wanting to apologize for our very existence. I used to say the word 'sorry' when there was no need for me to do so. It became a habit and reflected my chronic toxic shame, low self-worth and low self-esteem.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“I believe that there is a sacred child-like spirit in all of us (often referred to as our younger self or sacred inner child), one we can access and heal in recovery. We can gradually learn to integrate our youthful spirit into our everyday life. There is sweet sacredness when a person truly dedicates himself or herself to reclaiming his or her forgotten and abandoned inner child.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“In my personal recovery, mindfulness has helped me to become aware of my trauma responses and given me an anchor to stay present when I have been triggered. Being able to feel my triggers without reacting must be largely credited to learning to anchor myself in my body through mindful body scan meditation.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Drug addicts will likely suffer from other addictive or dysfunctional behaviours. Seldom will you meet a drug addict who does not exhibit multiple addictive behaviours. Because drug addiction and eating disorders are impossible to ignore so are often in the splotlight, often subtler addictive behaviours, such as love addiction, compulsive underearning and sex addictions, may be neglected.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“For many emotionally wounded addicts, the idea of grieving is a daunting prospect. To regularly grieve does require courage and a desire to heal - but rest assured; the resulting gains from these efforts are profound.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Most people need to reach some sort of emotional rock bottom before they are willing to do their deep feeling work, let alone address an addiction. This is why, in my view, hitting rock bottom can be a springboard to an immeasurably better life.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“The power of self-kindness can help us to heal our chronic shame and self-loathing. In a world that is often mean-spirited and cruel, a daily practice of kindness and warm-heartedness can make all the difference.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“There is a difference between following your instincts and listening to your intuition. Instincts are primitive modes of survival (fight, flight, freeze, sexual urges, hunting and so on), whereas intuition is a much higher manifestation of thought and emotions.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Essentially, 'mindfulness' means having a deeper awareness of what is. Mindfulness entails being aware of our thoughts, feelings and body sensations as they arise in the present moment.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Unfortunately, incest is still quite common and is rife in families with a history of addiction. It is not unusual to hear of a daughter being subjected to incest on the part of her alcoholic father or grandfather, or the adult child of an alcoholic practising incest with her own children. Many recovering drug addicts, sex and love addicts or love avoidants have been victims of incest.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Frozen grief occurs when we deliberately numb out and refuse to process our major losses. Frozen grief is essentially suppressed emotional pain (loss and abandonment) stored in the human body. Frozen grief torments drug addicts. Deep below the emotional surface of the drug addict who has yet to find recovery lies untold, suppressed pain and loss.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“A family is a social system and if that system is dysfunctional, the ramifications for the children growing up within it are grave. In what is known as generational drug addiction, the adult children of drug addicts and alcoholics are quietly suffering all over the world. By the time the children have grown up, dysfunction has been deeply ingrained in mind, body and brain.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Generally speaking, drug addicts are afraid of their emotions. Many have spent years avoiding uncomfortable feelings by finding all sorts of ways to suppress them – what we might call 'numbing out' (by means of alcohol, cigarettes, food, drugs, sex, controlling people, compulsively fantasizing and so on).”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“Between the ages of 10 and 21, my thoughts were consumed with how to escape reality - how to mask my feelings of inadequacy, shame, guilt, fear, abandonment, rage and loneliness.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“In 'Drug Addiction Recovery' Christopher Dines elegantly teaches us a process for healing from paralysing grief, addiction and emotional wounds using a mindfulness-based approach.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“There is a difference between healthy bonding and what is known as enmeshment. Healthy bonding occurs when two people can be intimate and authentic with each other, and have an understanding of both parties’ humanness. No one is playing out a dysfunctional family role; there is a mutual respect for each other’s boundaries and personal sense of self.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way

“People who often talk about showing a ‘stiff upper lip’ are choosing to suffer in silence, isolating themselves from others and destroying a chance to be authentic and sincere. I have spent time with many male recovering addicts who have healed as a result of talking about their emotional pain and depression. Some of them fought in the first and second wars in Iraq; they are physically hard men and are certainly not ‘weak’.”
― Christopher Dines, Drug Addiction Recovery: The Mindful Way