Clive James Quotes

I hate when your friends quit drinking on you, don't you? It's sad. I've lost more friends to AA than Liberace did to the virus. It's sad to see 'em go. You see a thirty day chip on your buddy's key ring, it's like seeing a toe tag on his cold, stiff corpse.

I learned that I had character defects, that I was allergic to alcohol and drugs, and that I had an obsession with all the bad stuff. But thank God that I woke and that I had good people around me to support me. There's not much more I can say about it. You have to want to be a better person.

I keep telling people: Don't make me the poster boy for AA because I don't know a lot about sobriety, but I do know a lot about drinking.

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.

I don't know whether I will drink again in my life but I didn't drink yesterday, I am not drinking today and I'll try not to drink again tomorrow.

I am full of theories that are based on a very liquid foundation, because I used to be a drinker.

I did mostly alcohol. There were drugs, too - pills - and there was a danger that I would go over the edge. I could have. I thank God I didn't.

When I got sober, that was 1990.

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

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

But I think that the most important thing was to really stop drinking.

I don't drink. I choose to be sober now. I have drunk over the last six years, but I just don't want to be that person anymore.

I had what AA calls 'a convincer' - which made me realize that I couldn't do it any more. I went out drinking for about 70 hours here in London. At the end I knew I was done.

I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.

I had to change my relationship with alcohol in order to become the man that I knew I could be and that my family would be proud of.

It's funny, because when you tell people you've stopped drinking, there's an automatic reaction. People ask, 'Was it a lifestyle choice or were you waking up in a skip?'

I don't drink anymore.

Why is it a badge of honour to say you spent 15 years in AA ball?

I quit drinking. That was a big problem for a lot of years. Then after that, I just started feeling grateful again.

Greatness of any kind has no greater foe than a habit of drinking.

With God's help, I've not had a drink in nine and a half years. That's my whole story right there. And because of that, I'm doing this. I'm making records, I'm touring. I was so involved in just getting brain damaged, I wasn't doing anything. I had great ideas, many notebooks filled with notes, some of them I can read and some of them I just can't read, but I really didn't do anything constructive, it was all just good ideas. Now I'm trying to lead a constructive life a day at a time.

Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have been the favourite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom prevailed.

From 18 to 29 I was a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, drug addict, terrible eater and philanderer. The past eight years, since I got sober, have honestly been about trying to peel back each of those habits, to get back to the 12-year-old kid inside who was tremendously excited about life.

Dipsomaniac and the abstainer are not only both mistaken, but they both make the same mistake. They both regard wine as a drug and not as a drink.

As an alcoholic, you will violate your standards quicker than you can lower them.