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.

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

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.

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

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.

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