Suzanne Collins Quotes

I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11. It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America.

What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that's toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay.

A sensitive person is seldom happy with the world the way it is. And since you cannot change it, you think, 'Might as well numb the anguish.' If you're using something to escape reality, then it's something you need to address.

There were times when I got frightened. Things weren't going right, so I just went out and got smashed. That's me. Something goes wrong, I find a bottle. I don't like it about myself but I've done it before and I'll do it again. But I never vanished for days or held up shooting or quit the picture.

I was poisoning myself with alcohol and medicating myself. I was trying to numb things. I was trying not to feel things, and that's ridiculous. It's one of the dumbest things you can do, because all you're doing is postponing the inevitable. Someday you'll have to look all those things in the eye rather than try to numb the pain.

Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple.

He was hiding from his problems in a bottle, something that went against every piece of my nature. Me? I couldnʹt let my problems win without a fight.

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to - alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person - you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.

I drink to forget I drink.

I took a bottle of pills. I'd been in Europe and I had a lot of absinthe and I was just drinking and drinking, trying to, you know, just shut my body down.

People are constantly not feeling, but numbing themselves, either through medication or playing on their phones. If you start feeling bad, it's like, 'Distract! Distract! Put on Storage Wars!' And I know because I'm guilty of it, too.

Drugs, were a symptom - they weren't the cause of anything.

Drugs made me feel more normal.

Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict. It is the need to escape from a harsh reality.

I don't know if I was born an alcoholic, but I was definitely born anxious.

"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?" "Yes. A drink."

I used to refer to my drug use as putting the monster in the box. I wanted to be less, so I took more - simple as that. Anyway, I eventually decided that the reason Dr. Stone had told me I was hypomanic was that he wanted to put me on medication instead of actually treating me. So I did the only rational thing I could do in the face of such as insult - I stopped talking to Stone, flew back to New York, and married Paul Simon a week later.

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.

Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests. Why? You tell me. I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.

When you're an addict, you can go without feeling anything except drunk or stoned or hungry. Still, when you compare this to other feelings, to sadness, anger, fear, worry, despair, and depression, well, an addiction no longer looks so bad. It looks like a very viable option.

Many times drugs and alcohol - there's a technical term that they're called, emotional suppressants - are the only things that can help a person survive and get through and be able to deal with their pain.

If you don't think you've got the blues, just keep living, and if you don't think you're drunk, just keep drinking what you're drinking.

I can't stand when people use drugs as an escape. It's like, everybody suffers. Deal with your issues, you'll feel so much better.

I would lock myself in my room and drink a case of Corona and smoke a load of pot.