When you are in need of inspiration in your recovery from drug and alcohol dependency related issues, these quotes by Chris Prentiss will help lift your spirits and give you some wonderful insight to ease your mind.
“You are not an alcoholic or an addict. You are not incurably diseased. You have merely become dependent on substances or addictive behavior to cope with underlying conditions that you are now going to heal, at which time your dependency will cease completely and forever.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“If you examine your motive for doing anything, you’ll soon discover that your reason is that you believe it will make you happy.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“At the bottom of every person’s dependency, there is always pain, Discovering the pain and healing it is an essential step in ending dependency.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“Each river is different, but they all eventually lead to the ocean. No matter what we’re doing or when, or whether it brings us happiness or remorse, gain or loss, we’re all on our individual paths to enlightenment. Even when we’ve done something we consider wrong, we’re still on our path to enlightenment.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“Who you allow into the circle of your life will make the difference in the quality of your life.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“The best way for you to get that new experience is to change your response to what happens.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“It’s the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. That’s why I see the United States’ War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing that causes that compel people to reach for drugs.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“If you are surrounded by people who not only don’t believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“When you need an idea about how to do anything, get quiet and relaxed and think about what it is you need to know. Then the flow of ideas will come. Be patient and let it happen. Sometimes it takes a little while, but it always works.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“The more you engage in any type of emotion or behavior, the greater your desire for it will become.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. That’s a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease, a cause unto itself, simply no longer fits with what we know today about its causes.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“When a problem or a difficult situation arises, say to yourself, as if you already believe it: “This is for my benefit.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating “alcoholism” as if it is the problem, when it has nothing to do with the problem. They might as well be studying “scratchism” for people who have a chronic itch.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“We recognize that you’ve used substances to try to regain your lost balance, to try to feel the way you did before the need arose to use addictive drugs or alcohol. We know that you use substances to alter your mood, to cover up your sadness, to ease your heartbreak, to lighten your stress load, to blur your painful memories, to escape your hurtful reality, or to make your unbearable days or nights bearable.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“…there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that “Relapse is part of recovery.” It’s another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission to relapse because they think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“To give up power to change for the better is inherently distasteful to everyone, and to force people to affirm that they are addicts or alcoholics so they can speak in a meeting is shameful and demoralizing.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“The true source of happiness is within each of us.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“Take a few minutes now and see your current circumstances- your physical condition, your emotional condition, your possessions, your financial condition, where and how you live, your relationships, the situations surrounding your life, and the way you believe other people see you- as mirrors showing you “Who You Are.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“A relationship is like a garden. To create a condition that will cause your plants to thrive and produce abundantly, you must weed, water, fertilize, and care for the plants in your garden. You must also know about the special needs of the plants you’re caring for. Some need more or less light than others, some need more or less water than others, and some need special fertilizers.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams
“If those underlying conditions aren’t treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we’ll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That’s the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent of alcohol and addictive drugs. It has little to do with alcohol and addiction themselves and almost everything to do with the original causes that created the dependency.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“The world is actually a mirror, and as you change, you will see everything around you changing as well, mirroring your changes.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“What we call coincidences, accidental and remarkable events occurring at the same time, are actually circumstances and events that have come into your life to serve a purpose is to benefit you.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“When you change the way you see and interpret events, suddenly everything will be different for you. Everything will make sense.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“We know that you don’t want to be a drunk and you don’t want to be hooked on addictive drugs. You do it because you can’t cope with your life without some sort of support, even if that support is damaging.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“How do you think your body and mind would respond if you were surrounded by psychologists, psychiatrists, or drug and alcohol counselors who subscribed to the belief that “once an alcoholic or addict, always an alcoholic or addict” and who believed that your current stay in rehab would be one of many?”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“Negative emotions, like depression or anxiety, have been shown to affect our immune system. Stress impedes wound healing.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“If you feel depressed for an hour, you’ve produced approximately eighteen billion new cells that have more receptors calling out for depressed-type peptides and fewer calling out for feel-good peptides.”
― Chris Prentiss, Zen and the Art of Happiness
“When you imagine yourself as a failure or as having insurmountable problems in your relationships or any part of your life, you think failure, act failure, and produce failure.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams
“A diminished self-image will cause you to slouch, to avoid meeting others, to avoid looking others in the eye, to be unassertive, and to be indecisive.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams
“If who you are and what you have is what you want, that’s perfect. Keep doing what you’ve been doing and you’ll get more of it.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“Trustworthy partners always think first before they do anything that may affect either the reputation or well-being of each other.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams
“We help our clients discover and correct the underlying conditions that are causing them to self-medicate, to seek relief in substances and addictive behavior.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams
“Do you believe in chaos- in random, uncontrolled events, in the idea that anything can happen at any time without fixed laws governing it? If you believe that, you will always be in a state of fear, not knowing what will happen from one moment to the next. The fear might be small, but it is there. That fear results in a lack of security and a feeling of mistrust.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams
“Most centers offer a one-program-fits all type of service, which is rather like a department store that sells one-size fits all clothing.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“In the one-treatment-fits-all approach, clients sit in group meetings all day and all evening and listen to each other stories. At the end of the first week, everyone in the room knows everyone’s story. That goes on for three more weeks, and then most people go home with the same problems they brought with them when they arrived.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“Staying sober is easy once you have been successful in healing the underlying conditions that were responsible for your dependency in the first place.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
“If you have experienced recurring situations in your life that are unpleasant, know that there is something you are supposed to be getting from those situations that you have not been getting and that the moment you get it, those situations will pass out of your life, not to return.”
― Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
“If I were to create a word that more accurately describes alcoholism and addiction, I would say it was . Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Yet it’s no sillier than the word alcoholism. The reason alcoholism no longer sounds silly to you is because you’re used to hearing it, reading it, and thinking about it.”
― Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
