“...most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.”

“That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning tehy have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for this is 'analysis paralysis.' ... That other people can often see things about you that you yourself canno see, even if those people are stupid ... That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish.”

“Drug addicts driven to crime to finance their drug addiction are not often inclined toward violent crime. Violence requires all different kinds of energy, and most drug addicts like to expend their energy not on their professional crime but on what their professional crime lets them afford. Drug addicts are often burglars, therefore.”

“That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people... That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.”

“You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking. ”

“I think this generation has it worse or better than any other. Because I think we're going to have to make it up. I think we're going to have to make up a lot of our own morality, and a lot of our own values. I mean, the old ones-- the '60s and early '70s did a marvelous job of just showing how ridiculous and hypocritical, you know, the old authoritarian Father's-always-right, don't-question-authority stuff was. But nobody's ever really come along and given us anything to replace it with. Reagan gave us a kind-- I mean, the Reagan spasm I think was very much a story about a desperate desire to get back to that. But Reagan sold the past. Reagan enabled a fantasy that the last forty years hadn't taken place. And we're the first generation--maybe people starting about my age, it started in '62. We grew up sorta in the rubble of kind of the old system. And we know we don't want to go back to that. But the sort of--this confusion of permissions, or this idea that pleasure and comfort are the, are really the ultimate goal and meaning of life. I think we're starting to see a generation die.. on the toxicity of that idea.”

“That 99 of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves that 99 of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to happen to them and then weirdly that if they stop to think about it that 100 of the things they spend 99 of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences are never good. Then that this connects interestingly with the early-sobriety urge to pray for the literal loss of one’s mind. In short that 99 of the head’s thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself.”