Billy Joel Quotes

Why is it a badge of honour to say you spent 15 years in AA ball?

I'm a recovering alcoholic so I should be home.

I used to be a drinker but I found out how bad it was and I let it alone.

But I think that the most important thing was to really stop drinking.

I never had one beer. If I bought a six-pack of beer, I kept drinking till all six beers were gone. You have to have that kind of understanding about yourself. I haven't had a drink now in 12 years.

When I stopped drinking, it was only because I thought if I don't stop, I'm going to die.

I had what AA calls 'a convincer' - which made me realize that I couldn't do it any more. I went out drinking for about 70 hours here in London. At the end I knew I was done.

I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.

I just think my body can't handle it any more. I did try a little drink a while back, and I was actually physically ill. I went into an immediate depression, and felt awful, just dreadful. So that's it. I'm over it now.

Home Protection—protection against the tyranny of drink.

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves would restore us to sanity.

I wasn't really an alcoholic, but I was losing control. I still go for a beer, but I drink a lot less.

I don't have many regrets in my life. But I have one. I would have stayed sober all along.

I don't believe I'm a recovering alcoholic - I'm someone who used to drink. AA comes from a religious movement and that whole thing of 'I'm always burdened with this' and the original sin idea. It's not like that for me.

I've been sober now for 18 years. With all the drugs, psychedelics and narcotics I did, I was [really] an alcoholic. Honestly, I only used to do cocaine so I could sober up and drink more. My last five years of drinking was a nightmare. I was drinking a half-gallon of rum with a fifth of rum on the side, in case I ran out, 28 beers a day, and three grams of cocaine just to keep me moving around. And I thought I was doing fine because I wasn't crawling around drunk on the floor.

I know I can get to the stage where I'm drinking a lot. I tend to be rotten and groggy all day and hanging out for the next drink and five o'clock, ping! I have to just stop.

When I got sober, that was 1990.

And I have always told the patients when I talk to them. When they come around and say, 'What will you have to drink? Oh that's right you don't drink.' Just speak up and say, 'Of course I drink. But I just don't drink alcohol.'

I was an alcoholic, for sure. It became a problem steadily over the course of six years.

My voice? Yeah, well, I used to drink a lot of beer when I was a kid and I sounded like a drunk in a choir. I don't drink anymore.

My second marriage had a lot to do with alcohol.

I had to accept that I was an alcoholic, that was the main thing. I think you've got to. But I try not say that I'm an alcoholic. I prefer to say that it's a disease I've got.

I mean, I inherited the disease of alcoholism, and I learned early to get help when I needed it. I always went to people who knew more than I did.

When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.

I began drinking alcohol at the age of thirteen and gave it up in my fifty sixth year; it was like going straight from puberty to a mid-life crisis.