If you subscribe to the idea that #‎ addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children - paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets.

Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying

I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it.

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.

We deny the severity of our loved one's problem not because we are naive, but because we can't know.

The hopeful part about that is when you do have that help, you will feel better. It still doesn't make this easy. Nothing makes this easy, but you can make better decisions.

A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.