Mercedes McCambridge Quotes

The alcohol was awful. I was a terrible alcoholic. I mean, people used to ask how much drugs I did. I said, 'I only do drugs so I can drink more'. I was doing the coke so I could drink more. I mean, I don't know any other reason. I'd start drinking in the morning. I'd drink all day long.

It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.

My relationship with alcohol became unsustainable. For people who are going to ask, 'Were you an alcoholic?' I suppose the short answer is 'Yes.'

It's very addictive having a hit.

The more necessary it becomes to stop drinking, the more impossible it becomes to stop.

I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker.

Why do alcoholics begin down the same hazardous road day after day? They are in search of that elusive window of well-being that opens when you drink your way out of a hangover and aren't yet drunk all over again. The alcoholic's day consists of trying to keep that window open.

Addiction isn't about substance - you aren't addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.

Beneath all of these addictions is this disease, this control disease which is the mark of our society.

Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.

I think there are people that have very addictive personalities.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.

The alcoholic suffers from a disease.

I'm not an alcoholic.

Addiction is not a curable condition.

I have a very powerful form of alcoholism. I finally gave up and accepted the fact that if I even smell too much booze, I'm going to start drinking again. That's just how I am.

To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find.

Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.

Alcoholism is the disease of more.

[Being alcoholic] you're either too high or you're too low. I mean, I was always looking for the bell to ring. I was always waiting for that bell.

I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time, in all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only five hundred words were written. It was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink.

I was like one of those newspapers, those periodicals. There's all different kinds of alcoholics. There's the everyday kind: that's the consistent one. That's what people think an alcoholic is-but an alcoholic is basically just someone who's allergic to alcohol. That's all it means. It's just an allergy.

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 don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.