Paul Neilan Quotes

I'm like this wiry freak they pulled out of a bar two months ago and said, 'Let's throw it on the wall and see if it sticks.'

You never think you're on the verge of disaster while you're looking over the edge yourself. It's your friends and family who are trying to get you to stop destroying yourself and after a while it kind of sank in and I just cleaned up my act.

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.

It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing?

I was the one that put myself in rehab. I was the one that went to my parents and said, you know, 'I have a problem and I need to take care of it.'

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.

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that's not so bad; but New York City?

Jimi was a good guy 'til he got into drugs. That's the way it is. I just tell it like it is.

I had two experiences. I had a wonderful experience in rehab, and I had a terrible experience in rehab. But, to be honest, in the end, it wasn't rehab that got me sober. It was just finally surrendering and saying, 'I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. Somebody help me.'

I went off the rails for a few years with drink and different things.

I'll be seeking professional help with regards to alcohol and, until myself and the club feel this is under control, I'll be off the drink.

As a physician who was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, getting drunk on weekends, stressed out about having 35 patients in the hospital, and not being able to help either them or myself, I had my existential crisis way before I met Maharishi. I did meet him and he was an influence, but I met many other people as well.

I mean, for years [my father] would been doing everything imaginable ... from speed to downers to you name it. I used to call that "changing seats on the Titanic," and I used to say that I myself was not only changing seats on the Titanic but dating the crew.

I wrote my songs despite the fact that I was a drunk, not because of it.

I used to get drunk every night until I puked. Finally I admitted, "I am a bulemic".

So what are you planning to do with the rest of your life? Develop a drinking problem. More Scotch, please.

I fought against the bottle, but I had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawn shop, but that don't make it junk.

I stopped drinking when I was 23. I kind of started when I was 13, so it was a 10-year run. But I just became a bad, annoying drunk child, so when I stopped, I'd done a lot of things I wasn't proud of.

The drinking was getting way out of control. I just didn't recognize myself anymore. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was. I always had to have some drinks with me in my bag. Just waking up shaking and then having Bloody Marys on your own, first thing in the morning-I started to feel really pathetic about it. So I was like, "I can't live like this." It was just this really awful feeling of becoming a totally different person and not being able to control it at all. Then I tried to not drink, but that didn't work. So I figured I should just go to rehab.

Drugs and alcohol were ruling my life. I made a lot of bad decisions while I was drinking alcohol. The first thing I stopped was cigarettes and tobacco.

I sit there and think how it isn't fair that I can't drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and that is why. I blew my wad.

If there was a pill that allowed you to drink and not get drunk, an alcoholic would go "What happens if you take two?"

That's my only goal: Stay off crack.

The Long Red Road is a story about alcoholism and dysfunction and tragic tale of a man who's trying to drink himself to death on an Indian reservation in Dakota. It was written for me, so it's something I would love to do.

[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.