Joe J. Walsh Quotes

When you get into recovery after some addiction you have to relearn a lot of perceptions, attitudes and self-awareness if you want to stay clean. You really do change. Change doesn't happen often but to a certain extent in some way, I think when you get into recovery and you stay there, you change.

It was a slow process. You gotta remember I hadn't recorded a song sober in seven years. So it took me awhile to even feel like I could record a song sober.

When I stopped drinking... there were so many things I had to face that I didn't even realize were part of my makeup before. When you do that and have any changes that severe, you lose a lot of things, both good and bad.

I, myself, have not infrequently come across recovering addicts years later that I had given up on. It is like seeing a ghost come to life. The transformations can be astonishing.

If I can be an example of getting sober, then I can be an example for starting over

My anger made me drink as an escape from reality, a way of forgetting. But you don't know when the medicinal effect ends and the poisoning begins ... This is my sixth year of sobriety. Overcoming alcoholism has been my greatest challenge and my greatest reward.

Being sober for so many years is getting interesting.

I said I'd stop for a year, which was inconceivable to me and everyone around me. It seemed like so long. But then, after that year, I looked up and I still hadn't gotten my land legs back at all.

It took a great deal of acceptance to come to terms with being an alcoholic, but the acceptance was key to my sobriety. If I had not gained acceptance at that time in my life, I would not be standing here today.

I was such a heavy drinker I was going to die at age 37. Not to mention the drugs. I'm glad to be sober, I haven't missed a thing. A lot of people never get the chance to come back.

When you quit drinking you stop waiting.

Drugs were pretty easy to quit taking. I was never addicted to anything to begin with. But then, liquor - I had to wait about another six years before I finally got around to quitting that. I'm sure glad I did.

If I were to try to identify a turning point I'd say that was it - getting clean.

I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: 'Wait a minute - if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?' And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk.

One of the things that's often forgotten about drug rehabilitation, it's not a destiny. It's a journey.

When you get into recovery, you have to relearn a lot of perceptions, attitudes, and self-awareness if you want to stay clean. You really do change.

The road to sobriety is not easy and rehabilitation and the recovery process are not to be taken lightly.

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

And if there's anything I do it's change and grow. I'm just a living being. Every year of my life I seem to learn that everything I know is wrong.

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.

We know that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual.

I'm not sober. I haven't done drugs in 3 1/2 years, so I call myself clean.

I had a 10-year heroin habit and kicked that. Then I became an alcoholic. I drank two fifth's a day.

I write less about alcohol, less and less and less. You 're an addict - so of course you write about the thing you love most. I loved alcohol the most, loved it more than anybody or anything. That's what I wrote about. And it certainly accounted for some great writing. But it accounted for two or three years of good writing - it would never account for 20 years of good writing. I would have turned into Charles Bukowski. He wrote 10,000 poems and 10 of them were great.

I couldn't walk for almost three years. That was the greatest thing that happened. Instead of dancing, I sang.