How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?
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.
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.
I am becoming used to an overwhelming, grinding mixture of anger and worry...
Wherever you be, wherever you may, seek the truth, strive for the beautiful, achieve the good.
Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying.
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 innocent we are of our mistakes and how we responsible we are for them.