"I wanted to meet the monster. Why go down if you can go up?"

— Ellen Hopkins, Crank 🎄

"Passion creates, addiction consumes."

— Gabor Mat, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction 🎄

"Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things. Blindly, we consume more and more, believing we are hungry for more food, status, or money, yet really we are hungry for connection."

— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness 🎄

"Your lowest moment and life can be your best if you survive it and learn from it"

— Brian Cuban, Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorphic Disorder 🎄

"Life was radical right after I met the monster.Later, life became harder, complicated.Ultimately, a living hell, like swimming against a riptide,Walking the wrong direction in the fast lane of the freeway, Waking from sweetest dreams to find yourself in the middle of a nightmare."

— Ellen Hopkins, Glass 🎄

"It's not your fault you had an unwanted dick in you."

— Rebecca O'Donnell, Freak: The True Story of an Insecurity Addict 🎄

"...patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism create, encourage, maintain, and perpetuate addiction and dependency. Patriarchy and hierarchy are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear. This fear is expressed by the dominators through control and violence, and in subordinated people through passivity and repression of anger. The external conflict of hierarchy between dominants and subordinates becomes internalized in individuals, creating personal inner chaos, anxiety and duality. To quell the inner conflict people resort to addictive substances and behavior."

— Charlotte Davis Kasl 🎄

"I can no longer cry. I groan a few times. Through the slits that are my eyes, I stare at my shoes, at the gray swirls of the concrete floor, at the bright orange lid of my syringe. And I realizeits a kind of horrorthat this is my life.And I cant stop. I just cant stop. I cant stop anymore."

— Luke Davies, Candy 🎄