quotations about drugs
I don't like people who take drugs, customs men for example.
MICK MILLER
attributed, Quotes, Jokes & Anecdotes
Don't do drugs, because you will go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.
JOHN HARDWICK
attributed, Quotes, Jokes & Anecdotes
If people take any notice of what we say, we say we've been through the drug scene, man, and there's nothing like being straight.
JOHN LENNON
The Dick Cavett Show, September 24, 1971
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
Drugs are tearing apart our societies, spawning crime, spreading diseases such as AIDS, and killing our youth and our future.
KOFI ANNAN
Young People and Drugs, Apr. 8, 2003
Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed.
JIMMY CARTER
attributed, Chilling Out: The Cultural Politics of Substance Consumption
Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding. Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
Junky
You find out so many interesting things when you're not on drugs.
BOY GEORGE
attributed, 2,320 Funniest Quotes
Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system.
P. J. O'ROURKE
Modern Manners
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Othello
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society.... Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.
THEODORE J. KACZYNSKI
Technological Slavery
It's a drag to lose a friend because of an overdose. But other than that, in terms of morality, I have no problem with drugs. To me, drugs are like food.
JERRY GARCIA
interview, Spin, July 1987
Here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.
DAVID LEE ROTH
attributed, Everybody Must Get Stoned
Some of us look for the Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The Painted Veil
People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.
WENDELL BERRY
The Art of the Commonplace
You realize that people take drugs because it's the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Survivor
The drug war has nothing to do with making communities livable or creating a decent future for black kids. On the contrary, prohibition is directly responsible for the power of crack dealers to terrorize whole neighborhoods. And every cent spent on the cops, investigators, bureaucrats, courts, jails, weapons, and tests required to feed the drug-war machine is a cent not spent on reversing the social policies that have destroyed the cities, nourished racism, and laid the groundwork for crack culture.
ELLEN WILLIS
The Village Voice, Sep. 19, 1989
I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
Memoir