Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything....I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate....It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs.

Once and for all, people must understand that addiction is a disease. It’s critical if we’re going to effectively prevent and treat addiction. Accepting that addiction is an illness will transform our approach to public policy, research, insurance, and criminality; it will change how we feel about addicts, and how they feel about themselves. There’s another essential reason why we must understand that addiction is an illness and not just bad behavior: We punish bad behavior. We treat illness.

I'm not sure if I know any 'functional' families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don't have a full range of problems.

How innocent we are of our mistakes and how we responsible we are for them.

Wherever you be, wherever you may, seek the truth, strive for the beautiful, achieve the good.

How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.