Pete Townshend Quotes

It's so weird that I went to rehab. I always said that I would die before I went to rehab. But I thought, 'I'm going to stay here tonight.' And I stayed there for a month. It was great.

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

What I've learned to do is arrest my addiction - arrest it myself, so I don't get arrested.

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.

I had not had any drugs for 5 years but then I relapsed again. I have also smoked nearly everything. Every day it was a battle to recover, which I fought for my son and myself.

Friend of mine just told me he used to be a bad alcoholic. I calmed him down. Told him he was a good alcoholic just a horrible drinker.

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.

It's been so long since I've really truly felt what it's like to live life without substances to help. Massive struggle that's natural to one's health, but with addiction in my blood I play the cards I was dealt.

I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

I do believe that I'm an addict on one level or another at all times.

When I got sober, that was 1990.

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

I mean, I inherited the disease of alcoholism, and I learned early to get help when I needed it.

Trying to overcome addiction is one of the hardest things for a person to do. And the fact that I had to do it under the scrutiny of tabloid press at first made it seem even more difficult. But in fact, it oddly ended up being a plus. Because of the tabloid stuff, it wasn't like I could walk into a bar and order a drink.

I said, to hell with the whole thing, to hell with show business. I'm gonna make a new life for myself, and I got off drugs, completely kicked all that stuff.

Yeah, I admit to myself, yeah, I'm an alcoholic.

I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.

It's difficult to talk about, you know, my inadequacies, my inability to stay sober when I'm a relatively bright man and I've had a lot of great blessings and a lot of great opportunities.

I've always had an addictive nature.

Well, I decided to stop. And I did. I stopped smoking, and I stopped speed at the same time.

I admire anyone who rids himself of an addiction.

In '85, I went through rehab and I wasn't ready. If you're not ready, you're not ready. You don't want to hear the truth, and you're gonna keep doing what you keep doing.

I had to come to terms about becoming an addict, which, for a long time, I lied to myself about the status of until I couldn't lie any more, 'cause I was either going to die or get better.

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.