Lauren Beukes Quotes

There was a reason my first substantial role after rehab was to play a maniac whose personal story ended badly. I knew what it was like to go those dark places. I played a guy who died as a result of his abuse.

I spent a year in a 12-step program, really committed, because I could not believe what had happened - that I might have killed myself.

Mr. Speaker, as a grateful recovering alcoholic of 24 years myself, I am living proof that treatment does work and that recovery is real.

Around 2001, I went to rehab in Arizona, and I started to see what was going on and how the past affected me. I started to get a grip on it. But over the next decade, I reverted to the behaviour I used to protect myself when I was young - being mindless, being defeatist and full of bravado.

One of my dearest friends is alive only because of AA. But it doesn't help a lot of people. And everyone is different, and everyone needs different kinds of treatments.

Heroin, forget it. In my neighborhood, I could see what heroin did firsthand and I was definitely afraid of that number.

I think 12-step programs really work, rehab really works, certain types of therapies and talking to other addicts really work. There are a lot of things that work - that isn't the problem. The problem is getting the addicts to say they're addicts. The problem is admitting it.

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.

It's amazing how coke encompasses everything in your life. Addicts cannot confront life because they only think of their next hit. I ruined life for my parents, my sister and all my friends.

When I got sober, that was 1990.

Drugs scared me.

When I cleaned up some 17 odd years ago, I felt terrible for about six months. The only thing that gave me any real relief was strenuous physical activity.

I didn't know my dad for a long time. My dad was on drugs and my dad was at the VA Hospital, my dad was off in his own world selling drugs or using them or there would be crack heads in the house or whatever it would be.

For a lot of folks who get sober, the process of getting and staying sober becomes their higher power, and it becomes a religion that sort of consumes a whole lot of them. I just don't think that that's necessary. I think that that can be a side note rather than the story of your life.

I do what I can to make young people understand that drugs can destroy their lives. I'm the perfect example of what people can accomplish when they have regained a sane body and spirit.

I do not understand rehab. If it works for people, then God bless them.

I prayed to God for help and I put myself in a recovery house called Studio 12. It was for people in the business and you didn't have to have any money to go, which was good because I was broke.

I could not finish the rest of the tours the band had planned. I was replaced by Matt Cameron. The next years of my life were about recovery, healing, and right living. I never lost the need to create.

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.

Until I went to rehab, I didn't understand what it did.

I fought back, got injured again and I had to have another operation. I got down and depressed and I think I was drinking more than I should. Well, I know I was.

I am a recovering alcoholic.

Well, all I can say is, it's a day-by-day program, and so I'm very worried about relapsing, but I don't know. I don't want to use. I don't want to go back to that place because nothing good came of it. It was super dark; it's not nice.

I grew up around a lot of aggressive guys. My parents used to take me to AA meetings when I was very young. So I know aggression, I know insanity.

I do take responsibility for it. I admit to having a problem. I have been to numerous treatment centers.