“Alcohol is the drug ethanol. They are one and the same. Alcohol is also called ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol. It is a chemical compound. Ethanol is often added to the gasoline we use to run our cars.”
— Chris Prentiss
“We know that you don’t want to be a drunk and you don’t want to be hooked on addictive drugs. You do it because you can’t cope with your life without some sort of support, even if that support is damaging.”
— Chris Prentiss
“…there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that “Relapse is part of recovery.” It’s another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission to relapse because that think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Whatever you now do, whatever you now believe, whatever your current circumstances may be, you are perfectly equipped and fully capable of fulfilling your needs and desires.”
— Chris Prentiss
“When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.”
— Chris Prentiss
“When nothing else worked, we created a holistic, hand-tailored program that saved Pax’s life. At Passages, he and I use what we learned in curing him to help others discover the roots of their addiction or alcoholism and break free.”
— Chris Prentiss
“If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can’t stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.”
— Chris Prentiss
“The advertise their products in such a fashion as to make it seem wonderful to drink their ethanol products. It does not matter if they give their products fancy name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, or if they put bubbles in an ethanol product and call it champagne or beer- everyone is selling ethanol.”
— Chris Prentiss
“If those underlying conditions aren’t treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we’ll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That’s the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent of alcohol and addictive drugs. It has little to do with alcohol and addiction themselves and almost everything to do with the original causes that created the dependency.”
— Chris Prentiss
“It is ethanol that everyone is after when they drink alcoholic beverages. That is what gives us the euphoric feeling, and that is what all vendors of alcoholic drinks are selling.”
— Chris Prentiss
“If I were to create a word that more accurately describes alcoholism and addiction, I would say it was dependencyism. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Yet it’s no sillier than the word alcoholism. The reason alcoholism no longer sounds silly to you is because you’re used to hearing it, reading it, and thinking about it.”
— Chris Prentiss
“How do you think your body and mind would respond if you were surrounded by psychologists, psychiatrists, or drug and alcohol counselors who subscribed to the belief that “once an alcoholic or addict, always an alcoholic or addict” and who believed that your current stay in rehab would be one of many?”
— Chris Prentiss
“Your life today is the result of a series of decisions you made that have caused you to arrive where you are.”
— Chris Prentiss
“You can take the entire world of physics with all of its macrocosm and microcosm, its quantum mechanics and nuclear physics and reduce it to one word: energy. It’s all energy. Scientists say that if you can’t measure it, weight it, or see it, it doesn’t exist. Well, no one has ever seen energy. We can see its effects, but not “it.”
— Chris Prentiss
“The energy everything is made of is conscious. It’s alive.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Every belief that you hold manifests itself in some manner by either causing you to take some form of action or by preventing you from taking action. If you don’t believe something is possible, you won’t even attempt it.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Stress comes from the way you relate to events or situations.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Your actions create an “energy vortex” that draws in the necessary ingredients for your venture.”
— Chris Prentiss
“A strong personal philosophy does more than sustain us through the tragedies of life. It also stains us daily in everything we think and do. It gives us optimism and hope.”
— Chris Prentiss
“If you are surrounded by people who not only don’t believe in your goals and your positive outlook on life, but who also continually try to tear you down, it will be extremely challenging for you to hold firmly in mind that you will succeed and that you can be happy.”
— Chris Prentiss
“What determines each person’s state of happiness or unhappiness is not the event itself, but what the event means to that person.”
— Chris Prentiss
“The true source of happiness is within each of us.”
— Chris Prentiss
“The answers are never “out there.” All the answers are “in there,” inside you, waiting to be discovered.”
— Chris Prentiss
“A computer cannot manufacture new information. That’s the difference between our brain and a computer.”
— Chris Prentiss
“We like to take credit when we get a new idea, as if we originated the idea in our brain, but what we actually did was no less extraordinary: we channeled the idea.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Every person in the AA program who’s successful is living proof that he or she does have power over addictive drugs and alcohol- the power to stop.”
— Chris Prentiss
“AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, “The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking,” but it isn’t open to everyone. It’s open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, “We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.”
— Chris Prentiss
“… all decisions and actions that will affect your relationship must be made by answering this single question: Will the action I am considering have a negative impact on my relationship? If the answer is yes, don’t do it.”
— Chris Prentiss
“Your perception of the world and the way you see yourself in it has created within your mind a concept, a philosophy, of the way you believe things to be.”
— Chris Prentiss