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.

Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.

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

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'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.

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

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