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

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.

An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.

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

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.

This stigma associated with drug use--the belief that bad kids use, good kids don't, and those with full-blown addiction are weak, dissolute, and pathetic--has contributed to the escalation of use and has hampered treatment more than any single other factor.

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.