Caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.
I know there is no point in haranguing him because he will just shut down, but I want to cover every angle.
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.
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.
I didn’t cause it. I can’t control it. I can’t cure it.
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.
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.
A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.
We deny the severity of our loved one’s problem not because we are naive, but because we can’t know.
An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.
How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?