Valerie Bertinelli Quotes

I've just completed a five-year period that can perhaps best be called a breathing spell. A time of getting my health back and gathering my strength. That time also included incredible cocaine abuse, a heart attack and my wife's recovery from both alcoholism and cocaine abuse.

My anger made me drink as an escape from reality, a way of forgetting. But you don't know when the medicinal effect ends and the poisoning begins ... This is my sixth year of sobriety. Overcoming alcoholism has been my greatest challenge and my greatest reward.

I had a 10-year heroin habit and kicked that. Then I became an alcoholic. I drank two fifth's a day.

The trick is to use the drugs once to get there, and maybe spend the next ten years trying to get back there without the drug.

Drugs were pretty easy to quit taking. I was never addicted to anything to begin with. But then, liquor - I had to wait about another six years before I finally got around to quitting that. I'm sure glad I did.

Everyone reaches their point in time where either they die or they get sick of doing drugs. It started getting debilitating. I enjoy my music a lot better than my drugs.

Substance abuse is a disease which doesn't go away overnight. I'm working hard to overcome it. I did fail my recent drug test. I'm prepared to face the consequences.

I got sober when I was 22 years old.

I got sober at age forty-two.

Rehab is one thing, but it takes years to get that attitude adjustment.

The road to sobriety is not easy and rehabilitation and the recovery process are not to be taken lightly.

Nothing good could ever have come of my life if I hadn't been able to get therapy and overcome my addictions.

I don't want to make a show about AA because it's a personal experience for anybody who is a part of that. My relationship with it has changed over the years, and I wanted the show to reflect that in a real way.

I could never stop drugs, I could never stop drinking, until I received my spiritual awakening.

Sober alkies are often asked: "When did you hit rock bottom?" but a more informed question might be: "How many times did you hit rock bottom?

I'm not the kind of person who could join AA or have rules for myself or on Thursday take this vitamin pill. So, basically, I learned the hard way. I learned by trial and error, and tried to get drugs out of my work. That took about a year. If I was going to work, it was best that I be straight. And I was surprised at what came out.

I'm off everything apart from the fags and the coffee. I don't know if it's worked. It works up until you take your first drink.

My history of moving away from drugs is not the kind you hear from most people. Certainly not from celebrities, especially those professionally recovering people. What I've noticed in my overuse of cocaine is the period of pleasure versus the period of pain. That is to say that when you first get high on anything, the pleasure is predominant and you don't pay much price. A little hangover or whatever it might be with another drug. But after a while the ratio begins to change, and there' s far more pain in the deal than pleasure. It just completely goes in another direction.

I went to rehab [for alcoholism] in wine country, just to keep my options open.

I was a weekend drinker...I'd start on Saturday, end on Friday...thought I was controlling it...but I don't drink any more.

It took a great deal of acceptance to come to terms with being an alcoholic, but the acceptance was key to my sobriety. If I had not gained acceptance at that time in my life, I would not be standing here today.

I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.

I believe in detox. I think detox is smart. You've got a guy who's in an opiate cycle or a dope cycle or something, and he can't get out of it. You shut him down long enough so at least his body can start working for itself again.

I've been sober for so many years. It wasn't like you flick a switch, and you're sober. It takes a while. You have to learn how to do everything all over again. You can measure how long that takes in terms of years.

It took me a long time to reach the bottom and it went through various stages. I went from drugs into an alcohol stage. For a while, one feels, "Ah, I've kicked drugs," but what I discovered was I had another addiction instead.