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

Here's a note to the parents of addicted children: Choose your music carefully...There are millions of treacherous moments.

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

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.

I am becoming used to an overwhelming, grinding mixture of anger and worry.

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.

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