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Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?

Elizabeth Wurtzel

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Elizabeth Wurtzel
Age: 52 †
Born: 1967
Born: July 31
Died: 2020
Died: January 7
Autobiographer
Journalist
Lawyer
Writer
New York City
New York
Elizabeth Lee Wurtzel
Helping
Substance
Away
Keeping
Keep
Abuse
Doe
Learning
Mean
Focus
Deceptively
Mind
Getting
Dope
Help
Reduced
Simple
Depression

More quotes by Elizabeth Wurtzel

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It's nonverbal: I need love. I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on. And I know it's around me somewhere, but I just can't feel it.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key.
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Taking a hypersensitive approach to life had come to seem so much more pure and honest then joining the ranks of the numb masses who could let it all slide by. What I stopped realizing was that if you feel everything intensely, ultimately you feel nothing at all. Everything registers at the same decibel.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I start to think there really is no cure for depression, that happiness is an ongoing battle, and I wonder if it isn't one I'll have to fight for as long as I live. I wonder if it's worth it.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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In life, single women are the most vulnerable adults. In movies, they are given imaginary power.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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No one who had never been depressed like me could imagine that the pain could get so bad that death became a star to hitch up to, a fantasy of peace someday which seemed better than any life with all this noise in my head.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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That is all I want in life: for this pain to seem purposeful.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realized there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Divorce has taught us how to sleep with friends, sleep with enemies, and then act like it's all perfectly normal in the morning.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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The biggest problem that women have is being ambivalent about their own power, ... We should be comfortable with the idea of wielding power. We shouldn't feel that it detracts from our femininity.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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The American Dream, coupled with government subsidies of utilities and cheap consumer goods courtesy of slave labour somewhere else, has kept the poor huddled masses from rising up.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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I'll see Naomi Wolf on television periodically, I have nothing against her and what she says, but I'll feel that she's a politician, like she's got an agenda to get across and that she doesn't always say what's really true or exactly what she feels.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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It's being a grown up, which I never figured out how to do, scrubbing the tub, and remembering to eat and shampoo my hair. It's the basics: I can write a whole book, but I cannot handle the basics.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don't know the answer, I know only that I can't.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Oh, Ma, you're looking at all the trees, and I'm not even in the forest.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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Even if I remember the first time perfectly, I don't remember the beginning at all. I mean: the beginning of addiction. It's hard to say when it becomes a problem it sneaks up on you like a sun shower.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
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You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended to philosophical heights.
Elizabeth Wurtzel