It goes without saying that a great majority of men are sex addicts, or would be if they could manage to get laid.

— Drew Nellins Smith

I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat. That was until I became one...

— Cathryn Kemp

Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.

— John Grisham

So are you an inmate or a rubbernecker?" she asks." Rubbernecker," I answer without hesitation. "You?"" I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to more puking sickness." I'd be surprised at her forthrightness, but that's addicting for you. The twelve steps crack 'em open, and then they can't shut up.

— Lauren Beukes

The only way to truly help most drug addicts and most alcoholics is to—instead of them—change reality.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict? The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict. The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. Furthermore, I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)

— William S. Burroughs

The reader! You, dogged, uninsurable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame?

— John Barth

There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)

— Sherman Alexie

There are casualties in war. Those who don’t make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor. Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us. How dare we try to take life to the next level. Instead of merely protecting ourselves or scrounging up our next meal, we have the audacity to hope for something more—a witness for our lives who will survive alongside us.

— Christopher Hawke

There are lasting consequences for using drugs. I'll still be paying for my prior use.

— Layne Staley