Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

I told her that I didn't want to take any drugs. That I had come here not to take drugs. 'Listen,' she said, not unkindly, 'up until now I would say that ninety-nine percent of all the narcotics you have taken in your life you bought from guys you didn't know, in bathrooms or on street corners, something like that. Correct?'I nodded.'Well these guys could have been selling you salt or strychnine. They didn't care. They wanted your money. I don't care about your money, and, unlike your previous suppliers, I went to college to study just the right drugs to give to people like you in order to help you get better. So, bearing all that in mind ... Take the fucking drugs!'I took the drugs.

So are you an inmate or a rubbernecker?' she asks.'Rubbernecker,' I answer without hesitation. 'You?'I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to more puking sickness.' I'd be surprised at her forthrightness, but that's addicts for you. The twelve steps crack 'em open and then they can't shut up.

I couldn't have gotten sober without rehab because I needed the science.

And, you know, whenever you check yourself into rehab, they don't focus on, you know, the fact that you're an alcoholic. They go much deeper, you know? I mean, they go way deep. They crack you open and then spill you out and examine all the things that are on the table.

I'm an addict, I'm addicted to success. Thankfully, there's no rehab for success.

Back in those days I was stoned almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The difference today is that there is nothing you or anyone else could say to persuade me to inhale enough even to fill a flea’s lung with cannabis. It’s actually impossible to measure how fantastic I feel.

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.

The first week is the hardest. Then little by little the world opens up, and you realize there are all these people around you with their own needs that have nothing to do with you. Then you forget, and everything’s about you again. And maybe that cycle continues for the rest of your life. Maybe the world keeps expanding and contracting. Maybe you know you’re well when it finally stays the same size.

Be your OWN celebrity!