Rehabilitation Quotes

“...bars can't build better men and misery can only break what goodness remains.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo

“You are not sick
You are injured”
― Joerg Teichmann

“Addiction denied is recovery delayed.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Each body is different
Therefore each rehabilitation must be different”
― Joerg Teichmann

“We get addicted, not to the substance, but to the effect.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The main character, Gene Moore, is shown how much of his identity is wrapped up in his career and potential in that career. When he comes home from war no longer able to see himself as a baseball prospect, he isn't sure who he is. This is thoroughly reinforced every time one of his acquaintances identifies him by baseball or inquires about his status. How much of our identity and worth is wrapped up in our job title or the one we are aspiring to?”
― Gary Moore, Playing With the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War, and a Field of Broken Dreams

“Inmates would overwhelmingly welcome segregation. As Lexy Good, a white prisoner in San Quentin State Prison explained, “I’d rather hang out with white people, and blacks would rather hang out with people of their own race.” He said it was the same outside of prison: “Look at suburbia. . . . People in society self-segregate.”
Another white man, using the pen name John Doe, wrote that jail time in Texas had turned him against blacks:
'[B]ecause of my prison experiences, I cannot stand being in the presence of blacks. I can’t even listen to my old, favorite Motown music anymore. The barbarous and/or retarded blacks in prison have ruined it for me. The black prison guards who comprise half the staff and who flaunt the dominance of African-American culture in prison and give favored treatment to their “brothers” have ruined it for me.'
He went on:
'[I]n the aftermath of the Byrd murder [the 1998 dragging death in Jasper, Texas] I read one commentator’s opinion in which he expressed disappointment that ex-cons could come out of prison with unresolved racial problems “despite the racial integration of the prisons.” Despite? Buddy, do I have news for you! How about because of racial integration?' (emphasis in the original)
A man who served four years in a California prison wrote an article for the Los Angeles Times called “Why Prisons Can’t Integrate.” “California prisons separate blacks, whites, Latinos and ‘others’ because the truth is that mixing races and ethnic groups in cells would be extremely dangerous for inmates,” he wrote. He added that segregation “is looked on by no one—of any race—as oppressive or as a way of promoting racism.” He offered “Rule No. 1” for survival: “The various races and ethnic groups stick together.” There were no other rules. He added that racial taboos are so complex that only a person of the same race can be an effective guide.”
― Jared Taylor, White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century

“Alcohol is some people’s pillar of weakness.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Don't feel sad or get upset about your injury situation.
You can't change what has happened.
But you can change your future by being able to prevent your injuries.”
― Joerg Teichmann

“Accept your injury.
There are thousands of people who are dealing with the same injury.
You are not the only one.”
― Joerg Teichmann

“A positive approach gives you control over any circumstances.
Be positive to start your rehab. The results won't let you down.
Be positive to overcome your fear and you will win.”
― Joerg Teichmann

“Recovery is indeed a manifestation of the law of nature, efforts of patient and guidance from physical therapist or rehabilitation specialist.”
― Joerg Teichmann

“The road to redemption is a treacherous one that the accused must walk through in darkness but if we don’t shine the light then there is no hope for anyone finding their way to the other side.”
― Aysha Taryam

“And I do talk a lot, obviously, about my clients; those are the people I have to advocate for, and when I say that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done, I am thinking specifically about them. But I’m also thinking about everybody else. I mean, I believe that for every human being. I think if someone tells a lie, they’re not just a liar, that if someone takes something, they’re not just a thief. If you kill someone, you’re not just a killer.

But it’s also true, a nation that committed genocide against Indigenous people, a nation that enslaved Black people for two and a half centuries, a nation that tolerated mob lynchings for nearly a century, a nation that created apartheid and segregation laws throughout most of the 20th century, can also be more than that racist history suggests.”
― Bryan Stevenson

“It almost never takes a pleasant state of mind to desire to be high or drunk.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“The redemption of the mind, is equally important, as the redemption of the heart.”
― Wayne Chirisa

“Going to prison is terrible. You’re never comfortable. All the talk about ‘Club Fed’ is garbage… You’re surrounded by very violent people, very unstable people. Prisons work hard to make you uncomfortable. But that’s not what’s bad about going to prison. What’s bad about going to prison is that you’re separated from your family.”
― Andrew Fastow

“The organization called Alcoholics Anonymous is doing a wonderful job in trying to rehabilitate some of these men.”
― Rachel Copelan, The Sexually Fulfilled Man

“There are three methods of dealing with offenders against society once they are apprehended: retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. Prison officials and men generally lay claim more or less to advocating all three. At present the public thinks that offenders should be punished. There are many different reasons why this is so, among them the belief that the average criminal responds to nothing but fear and penalties. Yet there is some real evidence that only through the very opposite of fear and punishment--intelligent good will--can men be reached and challenged and changes brought about.”
― Bayard Rustin, Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

“In rehabilitation there is no elevator. You have to take every step meaning one step at a time.”
― Joerg Teichmann

“But, in the early morning sunlight, dressed in their white gowns, the possibility of sin seemed to have been extinguished. Their sins were expunged. Major catastrophes like cheating on your wife and leaving your family, could no longer happen, would no longer happen.
But, of course, they did, and they do.”
― Paula Carter

“Hospital leaves us more malnourished than before we enter the corridors. Not many nutrients enter our systems while we are in-patients.”
― Shaista Tayabali, LUPUS, YOU ODD UNNATURAL THING: a tale of auto-immunity

“The gaining, or maintaining, of some reputations was, or is, made possible by the loss of sobriety.”
― @Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Digging in the dirt and shoveling manure in the corral is not going to strip off the layers of armor the first day or the second day or even the twelfth. But over time, they're part of something that they start from scratch and see through to the end. How often have they had the chance to do that? To feel like they created something? Especially something that could help keep another human being alive?”
― Debra Landwehr Engle, Grace from the Garden: Changing the World One Garden at a Time

“Most people who die of drug overdoses know it will happen to them oneday. They don't just realise it will happen to them sooner than they think.”
― Mzee Bryan Moseni Kabamba

“Being in a toxic relationship is a drug, and it needs to be treated like any other drug.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“This isn’t your fault, you know. It really isn’t. You’ll get through this.”
― Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

“You can't follow Jesus and addiction at the same time. Choose life.”
― Shaila Touchton

“Love is the ultimate rehab for those who have known nothing else but pain.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Pour Like Rain