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

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.

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.

At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them.

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

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

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