Tell yourself that you’re not like one of those chain smokers, that you can stop whenever you want. Start smoking American Spirits, so it’s like, not even that bad for you because it’s natural, or organic, or something. You forget.

“It became a running joke between my partners and I, that I was both too stigmatized and too famous to get my needs met.”

“Forming new habits isn’t easy, especially when your entire profession runs on a highly specialized vocabulary — but you know what else isn’t easy? Listening to how “abnormal” my body is.”

“I like toughness because it acknowledges an uncomfortable, complicated truth—that being disabled is hard—but rejects pity as an acceptable response. Instead, it gives my body credit for outlasting, adapting, and thriving in ways able-bodied people can’t imagine.”

“I made a choice about how I would look, and didn’t realize until I’d done it how unprecedented that was.”

“If a group I was attending was still printing, distributing, and teaching from a book that was blatantly racist or homophobic, I would get up and leave and/or advocate for change. I do not give special passes for misogyny and sexism, especially in my sobriety, because my self-worth is so integral to my complete recovery.”

“The fellowship said I was thinking too hard about it, that I was stubborn, and that I was not willing to admit that there were forces bigger than me. What they didn’t get was that I did believe there were forces beyond my control, powers bigger than me. Let’s just take gravity as one of many examples. I just don’t believe that praying to gravity or the radiator or the ocean would cure me of my alcoholism.”

If Lindsay Lohan is the ‘most pathetic person alive’ then I must come in at a close second. After all, I’ve been in and out of rehab twice as many times. And the way the media is talking about Lohan is really pissing me off.