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

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.

Once and for all, people must understand that addiction is a disease. It’s critical if we’re going to effectively prevent and treat addiction. Accepting that addiction is an illness will transform our approach to public policy, research, insurance, and criminality; it will change how we feel about addicts, and how they feel about themselves. There’s another essential reason why we must understand that addiction is an illness and not just bad behavior: We punish bad behavior. We treat illness.

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

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

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

When I transformed my random and raw words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into chapters, a semblance of order and sanity appeared where there had been only chaos and insanity.