Why does it help to read others' stories? It is not only that misery loves company, because (I learned) misery is too self-absorbed to want much company. Others' experiences did help with my emotional struggle.

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

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.

If you subscribe to the idea that #‎ addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children - paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets.

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

An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.

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.