101 Motivational Quotes for Recovering Addicts

Quotes About Overcoming Addiction, For Daily Sobriety Motivation, About Self Love & Addiction Treatment


101 Motivational Quotes for Recovering Addicts

Drug addiction recovery is a challenging experience. Fortunately, many resources are available to help you along the way. Some of these can inspire, and others, well, let’s just say they let you look at your situation with humor. 

Addiction recovery quotes can give you the strength to persevere through the darkest stages of addiction. While attending meetings, going to individual and group therapy, and enrolling in an inpatient recovery facility are good steps for getting sober, maintaining motivation is the essential part of your recovery journey. It’s all about the mindset.

Motivational Quotes About Overcoming Addiction

Overcoming the power of addiction is no easy achievement. Every day can be a struggle against inner turmoil and outside pressures influencing you. Sometimes, it helps to hear motivational quotes about willpower and finding the strength to overcome any challenge, no matter how great.

Motivational Quotes
“I’m very serious about no alcohol, no drugs. Life is too beautiful.”
-Jim Carrey

1. “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt

2. “I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.” – Charlotte Brontë

3. “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’” – Muhammad Ali

4. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. “Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery.” – Mahatma Gandhi

6. “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” – Joseph Campbell

7. “The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand as what direction you are moving.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

8. “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

9. “If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.” – Michael Jordan

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Motivational Quotes for Daily Sobriety Motivation

The daily battle for sobriety is an all-too-familiar struggle for many recovering addicts. Even those years into their sobriety, the threat of relapse remains a lurking presence in their daily lives. If you ever feel this way, know that plenty of people are dealing with the same struggle and that each day of sobriety is another victory.

10. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.” – Zig Ziglar

11. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier

12. “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life; it comes to us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives, and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” – John Wayne

13. “If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.” – Benjamin Alire Sáenz

14. “Fall seven times, stand up eight.” – Japanese proverb

15.  “Either you run the day, or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn

16. “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth

17. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

18. “When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love …”  ―Marcus Aurelius

Celebrity Motivational Quotes About Recovery

Often, celebrities in our culture are held to unfairly high standards regarding what is deemed acceptable by the public. The constant living in the spotlight for these stars can exacerbate stress and feelings of insecurity, which are just a couple of common triggers for many addicts. Today, many celebrities choose to talk publicly about their sobriety to generate awareness and support for those facing similar struggles.

19. “Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.” – Carrie Fisher

20. “It is 10 years since I used drugs or alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships, and, generally, a bright outlook… The price of this is constant vigilance because the disease of addiction is not rational.” – Russell Brand

21. “Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest.” – Robert Downey Jr.

Motivational Quotes
The daily battle for sobriety is an all-too-familiar struggle for many recovering addicts.

22. “I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake, and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.” – Samuel L. Jackson

23. “Once I was clear-headed, and I hadn’t been clear-headed in so long, I was like, I can never go back. And I’m still thankful.” – Travis Barker

24. “I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: ‘Wait a minute – if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?’ And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk.” ― Craig Ferguson

25. “I realized that I only had two choices: I was either going to die or I was going to live, and which one did I want to do? And then I said those words, ‘I’ll get help,’ or, ‘I need help. I’ll get help.’ And my life turned around. Ridiculous for a human being to take 16 years to say, ‘I need help.’” – Sir Elton John

26. “My recovery from drug addiction is the single greatest accomplishment of my life… but it takes work — hard, painful work — but the help is there, in every town and career, drug/drink freed members of society, from every single walk and talk of life to help and guide.” – Jamie Lee Curtis

27. ‘If it wasn’t for that rehab center, I probably wouldn’t have been here. In terms of recovery, it has been very important for me to be a part of a recovery community and to actively be around my people because they understand me. They get it.” – Macklemore

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Motivational Quotes About Self Love

Self-love is one of the most important steps for recovering addicts because it is often one of the root causes of addiction. Self-love involves accepting your flaws as a human being by letting go of internally held bias and allowing yourself to find happiness within instead of through material means.

28. “Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” – Carl Bard

29. “Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!” – Anne Frank

30. “What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.” – Hecato

31. ‘Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower.’ – Shigenori Kameoka

32. “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

33. “All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for. “– Jon Kabat-Zinn

34. People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, and even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.” – Ramona L. Anderson

35. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker

36. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wild

Motivational Quotes About Inner Strength During Recovery

It takes toughness to make it through the pain of drug and alcohol detox. Quitting cold turkey is not easy. One of the safest ways to rid toxins from one’s body is to enter a treatment center that is experienced at detoxification. However, as a recovering addict, you have to be ready to summon an inner reservoir of strength to successfully make it through the day.

37. “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

38. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger — something better, pushing right back.” – Albert Camus

39. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller

Motivational Quotes
It takes toughness to make it through the pain of drug and alcohol detox.

40. “We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely … change is due to wanting power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.” – George Sheehan

41. “Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.” – Bernard Williams

42. “You can come out of the furnace of trouble two ways: if you let it consume you, you come out a cinder; but there is a kind of metal which refuses to be consumed, and comes out a star.”– Jean Church

43. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.” – Rosa Parks

44. “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”– C.S. Lewis

45. “Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again.”– Shane Niemeyer

46. ‘When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.’ – Dalai Lama

47. ‘Cause sometimes you just feel tired. Feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up. But you gotta search within you. You gotta find that inner strength. And just pull it out of you, and get that motivation to not give up, and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face.’ – Eminem

48. Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for
something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.’ – Marie Curie

49. ‘Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once.’ – Paulo Coelho

50. “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” – Dr. Seuss

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Motivational Quotes About Maintaining Hope During Recovery

As many inside and outside of recovery know, hope is one of the most important things to hold on to. Hope inspires us to get up every day and gives us a reason to continue to fight addiction. With
hope, we become stronger, and by sharing that strength we motivate others to see a brighter future alongside us. Share these inspiring quotes about the power of hope!

51. “Nothing is impossible; the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!’” – Audrey Hepburn

52. “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

53. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean

54. “I dwell in possibility.” – Emily Dickinson

55. “Don’t let the past steal your present.” –Terri Guillemets

56. “Addiction begins with the hope that something “out there” can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.” – Jean Kilbourne

57. ‘Hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things, and good things never die.’ – Stephen King

58. “The only journey is the one within.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

59. “Every experience in your life is being orchestrated to teach you something you need to know to move forward.” – Brian Tracy

Motivational Quotes About Putting the Work Into Recovery

Recovery is no easy process. It takes a concerted effort to get your mind off addiction. Often, addicts find that throwing themselves into an effective form of addiction, such as exercise, yoga, reading, or community service, can help to keep the mind preoccupied. You won’t be disappointed if you work to achieve successful sobriety.

60. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford

61. “If things go wrong, don’t go with them.” – Roger Babson

62. “Every noble work is at first impossible.” – Thomas Carlyle

63. “Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley

64. “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

65. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford

66. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

67. “The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

68. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

69. “As one goes through life, one learns that if you don’t paddle your own canoe, you don’t move.” – Katharine Hepburn

70. “Amazing how we can light tomorrow with today.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

71. “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

72. “Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself.” – Theodore T. Hunger

Chinese Proverbs Quotes About Recovery

Some of the most profound sayings come from the Chinese tradition of Zen proverbs. These succinct, straightforward morsels of wisdom can help us find clarity in confusion and brightness in the darkness. These ancient proverbs cover everything from finding direction in life to maintaining sobriety to achieving inner peace.

73. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

74. “If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.’

75. “Patience and the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.”

76. “Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.”

77. “Adapt the remedy to the disease.”

78. “Control your emotions or they will control you.”

79. “A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.”

80. “With true friends…even water drunk together is sweet enough.”

81. ‘Either do not begin or, having begun, do not give up.”

82. “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.’

83. ‘It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy.’

84. ‘First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes a man.’

85. ‘It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.’ 

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Motivational Recovery Quotes from Artists

Artists offer a glimpse into how addiction can be expressed in multiple forms. From musicians to painters to actors, the art world is full of those on the journey to recovery and those still in the grips of addiction. We can learn much from these people, who express life’s pain, struggles, and joys with beauty, no matter the medium.

86. “I’ve wanted to feel pleasure to the point of insanity. They call it getting high because it’s wanting to know that higher level, that godlike level. You want to touch the heavens, you want to feel glory and euphoria, but the trick is it takes work.” – Anthony Kiedis

87. “Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.” – Gary Oldman

88. “It’s been a learning process, I’m growing. I couldn’t believe that anybody could be naturally happy without being on something. So I would say to anybody, ‘it does get better.’” – Eminem

Motivational Quotes
“Recovery is an ongoing process, for both the addict and his or her family. In recovery there is hope, and hope is a wonderful thing.”

89. “If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh

90. “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

91. “And that’s what it’s like for me in recovery at times. Afraid to take on responsibility, new sponsees or something, or allowing myself to stand up and shine… I’ve got new tools, I’ve got new hope, new love, a new respect for myself.” – James Hetfield

92. ‘I’ve been sober for 18 years now. It wasn’t like you flick a switch, and you’re sober. It takes a while. You have to learn how to do everything all over again. There is life after addiction, and it’s really good. If I had known, I’d have
stopped earlier.’ – Joe Walsh

93. “I went to hell and back, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Then I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in, happy about life and comfortable in my skin.” – Drew Barrymore

94. “A lot of people think that addiction is a choice. A lot of people think it’s a matter of will. That has not been my experience. I don’t find it to have anything to do with strength.” –Matthew Perry

95. “I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.” – Robert Downey Jr.

96. “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” – J.K. Rowling

Motivational Recovery Quotes About Fear

Fear lies at the heart of addiction. Fear of the unknown, of dealing with the painful things inside of us or that happened in our lives. But like FDR stated, ‘We have nothing to fear, but fear itself. Chemicals are addictive because they make us temporarily forget about our fears. But in the end, if we don’t deal with them, they’ll only come back to haunt us

97. “Not feeling is no replacement for reality. Your problems today are still your problems tomorrow.” – Larry Michael Dredla

98. “What is an addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.” – Alice Miller

99. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.” – Elbert Hubbard

100. “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.” – Charlotte Whitton

101. “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Alcohol or Drug Addiction Treatment

We selected these 101 drug addiction quotes to help you with the daily struggle, but you or your loved one should get treatment for it as soon as possible. We Level Up rehab treatment & detox center can provide you, or someone you love, treatment for alcoholism or drug addiction with professional and safe care. Feel free to call us to speak with one of our counselors. We can inform you about this condition by giving you relevant information. Our specialists know what you are going through. Please know that each call is private and confidential.

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