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"What is addiction? Only those that have been kept secret, are addictions. Those that are openly visible cannot be called addiction."

"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."

"I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn't taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers' sword and made me feel powerful and godlike."

"Gately can't even imagine what it would be like to be a sober and drug-free biker. It's like what would be the point. He imagines these people polishing the hell out of their leather and like playing a lot of really precise pool."

"With endless pharmacological supplies at our fingertips, we do not need to penetrate the motives behind our actions, feelings, transgressions, dreams, and phobias. High on chemical substances we can remain stagnated in an infantile mental state. Without introspection, we foreclose ourselves from gaining the insight that allows us to navigate adulthood's ceaseless demands."

"My mother smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Before she smoked her first cigarette, she was free to choose whether or not she would smoke. After awhile, her freedom reverted to Satan-so it would seem. The choice was no longer hers-so it would seem. Her mind and body were attacked with nicotine cravings that got so bad she would sometimes sacavage through garbage cans for butts when she'd run short on full cigarettes. I watched, baffled at how something so small and so disgusting to me could have such power over my mother. That's the thing about addiction-it binds us one choice at a time. That's also the good news about addition-you can unravel the hold it has on you-one choice at a time."
Explore more quotes by Charles Bukowski


"My poems are only bits of scratchingon the floor of acage."
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