Quotes by Chris Prentiss

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.

Its the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. Thats why I see the United States War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing that causes that compel people to reach for drugs.

Depression can be due to a low endocrine function, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar problems, food allergies, or systemic yeast infection. Depression can also result from medical illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, cancer, Parkinsons disease, and hormonal disorder. It can also be caused by a serious loss, a difficult relationship, a financial problem, or any stressful, unwelcome life change.

One of the first actions we take at Passages is to ruthlessly scrutinize, always under a doctors supervision and care, the specific necessity of any mind- altering or mood-altering medications that our clients are taking. As soon as any non essential drugs are out of their systems, the feelings they were trying to suppress usually emerge. When that happens, we can see what symptoms the client was masking with drugs or alcohol.

The treatment must fit the malady and the malady is not alcoholism or addiction, or addictive drugs and alcohol. Once the correct cause is diagnosed, healing will take place and hoped-for cure will come about.

Whether the underlying cause of your dependency is a chemical imbalance, unresolved events from the past, beliefs you hold that are inconsistent with what is true, an inability to cope with current conditions, or a combination of these four causes, know this: not only are all the causes of dependency within you, but all the solutions are within you as well.

The punishment approach and bad consequences approach to treatment is the kind of thinking that is prevalent in every residential substance abuse treatment center in the United States of which Im aware.

The more you engage in any type of emotion or behavior, the greater your desire for it will become.

Again, all of life presents us with two basic ways to treat events. We can either label them god for us or bad for us. The event is only an event. Its how we treat the event that determines what it becomes in our lives. The event doesnt make that determination- we do.

There is no cell culture for depression. You cant see it on a bone scan or an x-ray. Not everyone with depression will show the same behavioral symptoms.

If you feel depressed for an hour, youve produced approximately eighteen billion new cells that have more receptors calling out for depressed-type peptides and fewer calling out for feel-good peptides.

Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in which you live, about its people and events, about how you affect them.

At the alpha level, your imagination acts powerfully on your subconsciousness mind and therefore your imaginings are powerfully effective in producing the desired result. It is believed that our subconscious mind represents nearly 90 percent of our mental capacity, which is why influencing your subconscious mind produces such powerful effects.

When you need an idea about how to do anything, get quiet and relaxed and think about what it is you need to know. Then the flow of ideas will come. Be patient and let it happen. Sometimes it takes a little while, but it always works.

You are a perfect spiritual being. Get used to that idea.

You can be happy if you are willing to let go of your past and leave yourself unencumbered so you can fly freely.

We recognize that youve used substances to try to regain your lost balance, to try to feel the way you did before the need arose to use addictive drugs or alcohol. We know that you use substances to alter your mood, to cover up your sadness, to ease your heartbreak, to lighten your stress load, to blur your painful memories, to escape your hurtful reality, or to make your unbearable days or nights bearable.

Who you allow into the circle of your life will make the difference in the quality of your life.

Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. Thats a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease, a cause unto itself, simply no longer fits with what we know today about its causes.

When you imagine yourself as a failure or as having insurmountable problems in your relationships or any part of your life, you think failure, act failure, and produce failure.