Quotes from David Sheff

This is the way that misery does love company: People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague [drugs]--an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families.

But you know, I don't think I will be so scared to die. I think it's like today: the end of a vacation when you are ready to go home.

It's an incontrovertible fact that many--more than half of all children--will try [drugs]. For some of those, drugs will have no major negative impact on their lives. For others, however, the outcome will be catastrophic.

I know there is no point in haranguing him because he will just shut down, but I want to cover every angle.

Jasper, who is six, is the only one of us who responds appropriately. He wails, inconsolable for an hour.

The seventh and eighth grade were for me, and for every single good and interesting person I have ever known, what the writers of the bible meant when they used the words hell and pit ...It was all over for any small feeling that one was essentially all right. One wasn't...It was springtime, for Hitler, in Germany. Anne Lamott

The miracles do not cancel out evil, but I accept evil in order to participate in the miraculous.

You didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it.

In my first group, a counselor asked me why i'm here. he said, 'What's your problem? I said ' i'm a drug addict and an alcoholic.' he shook his head. 'no.' he said, 'that's how you've been treating your problem. what is your problem?

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

Since reason and love, the forces I had come to rely on in my life, have betrayed me, I am in unknown territory.

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

But it conveys the message that addiction is as biological a condition as multiple sclerosis. True brain diseases have no volitional component.

Nonetheless: if only and if only and if only.

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

If Nic were not ill he would not lie. If Nic were not ill he would not steal. If Nic were not ill he would not terrorize his family. He would not forsake his friends, his mother, Karen, Jasper, and Daisy, and he would not forsake me. He would not. He has a disease, but addiction is the most baffling of all diseases, unique in the blame, shame, and humiliation that accompany it.

Every time the telephone rings, my stomach constricts. Long after the euphoria from meth is no longer attainable—Tennessee Williams described the equivalent with alcohol in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: "I never again could get the click"—addicts are agitated and confused, and most stop eating and sleeping. Parents of addicts don't sleep, either.

sometimes a warrior's task is to sit with defeat.

Only girls wear tights. - Nic responds, "Uh,uh. Superman wears tights.

What about people with high cholesterol who keep eating French fries? Do we say a disease is not biological because it's influenced by behavior? No one starts out hoping to become an addict; they just like drugs. No one starts out hoping for a heart attack; they just like fried chicken.

The room has Nic's smell—not the sweet childhood smell he once had, but a cloying odor of incense and marijuana, cigarettes and aftershave, possibly a trace of ammonia or formaldehyde, the residual odor of burning meth. Smells like teen spirit.

Nic ha fatto uso di droghe, a fasi alterne, per oltre un decennio, e in quegli anni credo di avere sentito, pensato e fatto quasi tutto quello che un genitore può sentire, pensare e fare.

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. Nic

I have always assumed that vigilance and love would guarantee a decent life for my children, but I