Withdrawal Quotes

“The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.
The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“You gave me the key of your heart, my love;
Then why did you make me knock?”
― Rupert Brooke , The Collected Poems

“The darkness makes everything disappear but it makes nothing go away.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It was not long before I discovered that withdrawing addicts lost their composure in exactly the same manner that careless millionaires lose their money: gradually, then suddenly.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think.”
― Ellis Peters, The Heretic's Apprentice

“Undoubtedly, our weariness is not based on the fact that we’re running. Rather, our weariness is all too frequently based on the fact that many of the things that we’re running from are the very things we should be running to.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Now she looked at Matthias, his hair coming in thick and gold, long enough that it was just starting to curl over his ears. She loved the sight of him, and she hated it too. Because he wouldn’t give her what she wanted. Because he knew how badly she needed it.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Junk sickness is the reverse side of junk kick. The kick of junk is that you have to have it. Junkies run on junktime and junkmetabolism. They are subject to junk climate. They are warmed and chilled by junk. The kick of junk is living under junk conditions. You cannot escape from junk sickness anymore than you can escape from junk kick after a shot.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."
He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.
Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."

Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.

Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?”
― Mette Ivie Harrison, The Princess and the Hound

“Others saw in the trend still another instance of a disturbing tendency in the American suburb: the longing for withdrawal, for self-enclosure, for expensive isolation.”
― Steven Millhauser, Dangerous Laughter

“The very definition of an addictive drug is one that stimulates the mesolimbic pathway, but there are three general axioms in psychopharmacology that also apply to all drugs:

1. All drugs act by changing the rate of what is already going on.

2. All drugs have side effects.

3. The brain adapts to all drugs that affect it by counteracting the drug’s effects.”
― Judith Grisel, Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

“The fear within me is not the enemy. Rather, the enemy within me is the cowardice that refuses to face the fear.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“I believe you spend your life in some kind of hiding place, and you think you're safe from danger and harm, and one of these days you'll wake up and realize that the thing you're keeping yourself from is fullness.”
― Dov Zeller, The Right Thing to Do at the Time

“I feel like an addict. Like if you leave, I'll go into withdrawal.”
― Lindsay Ellis, Axiom's End

“Society is a thing to be Conquered or withdrawn from.”
― Pietros Maneos

“At every step, she paused, withdrew to the inner sanctuary, and asked herself, Does this feel right? Her answer came in the form of peace or tension. If she felt tension, she stepped a different way. If she felt peace, she kept going forward.”
― Donna Goddard, Circles of Separation

“Fight the urge to withdraw, to fold in on yourself, as if your pain is contagious and might infect someone else. We are here to take care of one another; the care is what's catching, spreading person to person to person. So take--and give--care.”
― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

“In the end, I will become the ghost I always feared. When the fire I kindled in my mind reaches my heart, I will start turning everyone I meet to ashes. So, I speak less and less, withdrawing more and more from the outside world. I navigate a realm that seems devoid of other human beings. I have become isolated in my mind, knowing that I will no longer encounter others, even in my thoughts. I love the solitude, so far below, so far away from life...”
― Rolf van der Wind

“Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can’t live alone, you were born a slave.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“We mustn’t withdraw from human interaction because it can be difficult. It keeps us grounded and helps us to grow through real and challenging situations. We do not need to decide which community to belong to. We just live life to the best of our ability and follow our interests and we will find ourselves within a community of people perfect for our growth.”
― Donna Goddard, Love's Longing

“In front of me, Cole’s smile had emptied. His eyes were going blank, which was what happened to Cole when you hurt him. The real Cole vacated the situation and left his body standing by itself.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Sinner

“Withdrawal is not really a choice. Nor is it something one should try to do. Some people will find that their attachment to the world has, without effort, diminished and they will crave solitude. They may withdraw from mainstream life in order to focus on their growth. Withdrawal can be deceptive in appearance. A person can live an apparently solitary lifestyle but their mind is full of noise. On the other hand, someone can have the appearance of a normal life but, unknown to others, be in a state of inner solitude.”
― Donna Goddard, Pittown

“If I refused to let the streckwolves have the humans, knowing they were more likely to succeed than I, then I was no better than a Greatwolf. And if I had to choose between being like Milsindra or like the little not-wolves, I would rather be a streckwolf.”
― Dorothy Hearst, Spirit of the Wolves

“You can never miss something you've never experienced. Something you should remember when you're sad.”
― Sarvesh Jain

“While the feelings and symptoms of depression and anxiety experienced may be due to the helplessness engendered by the relationship, these feelings can also be generated by the ongoing lack of emotional reciprocity and mirroring in the relationship. Depression is a complex disorder, but the hallmark symptoms of depression—sad mood, lack of pleasure in activities that are typically pleasurable, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, social withdrawal, poor concentration, changes in sleep and appetite.”
― Ramani Durvasula, Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist

“We mustn’t withdraw from human interaction because it can be difficult. It keeps us grounded and helps us to grow through real and challenging situations. Also, we never know when one of those beautiful, treasured moments of life will appear; someone unexpectedly expresses their appreciation for us, something heals, a conflict is resolved. We do not need to decide which community to belong to. We just live life to the best of our ability and follow our interests and we will find ourselves within a community of people; some we will love, some we will find tedious. That’s how it should be. We will have the perfect soil for growth.”
― Donna Goddard, Love's Longing

“My tidy and well-appointed box might be ‘my’ world, but it will never be ‘the’ world.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It would behoove me to realize that I can’t build a stronghold of any kind. Rather, I can only find one. And unless the stronghold that I find is God, everything that I fear will have a ‘strong hold’ on me.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Disillusionment is a state of withdrawal from a long- abused substance. No wonder it hurts like hell. No wonder it can scar or kill you.”
― Steven Heighton, The Virtues of Disillusionment