Quotes from David Sheff

that on any given night, an average of five hundred teenagers are taken to hospital emergency rooms for alcohol poisoning or other effects of binge drinking.

in the San Francisco Bay Area, where one out of every three people seem to be a therapist of some sort. What does this say about us? Scott Peck said that the sickest and healthiest people are in therapy. Which are we?

Its motto was grand: "There are no limitations, no boundaries; since we are on our own, there is nothing we cannot do; when you start with nothing you can do everything.

Every relapse is dangerous, but often it takes multiple relapses before someone finally gets sober for good.

Kids love the 'Mario Brothers' games, which are whimsical, inventive and lots of fun.

I came home one day and Nick was in his bedroom reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' and the tears were just flowing down his cheeks, at the terrible injustice that was being described in that book and the bravery of fighting against it.

Twelve-step programs require people to accept their powerlessness and turn their lives over to God or another higher power. Many adolescents question religion, and in general teenagers aren't going to turn their lives over to anyone.

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

I don't object to AA at all - only the programs that insist that it's the only way to get clean and to stay clean.

I spent years searching for effective programs that would lower drug use and prevent addiction.

My son is living proof that those like him can not only be treated, but can live lives free of the pain that plagued them and the disease that controlled them.

I'd heard about rehab, where you send people with drug problems, but I soon learned that there's no standard definition of it; instead it's a generic word for a wide variety of treatments, including some that are outrageous. Past-life therapy? Exorcism?

When change takes place gradually, it's difficult to comprehend its meaning.

If a child had another disease, we'd be open about what we were going through, but addiction is stigmatised and comes with shame and guilt.

It's hard to find someone who did as many drugs for as long and in such dangerous combinations as Nic - spending years going to Oakland and finding abandoned warehouses, getting beaten up, getting threatened by a guy with a crossbow. By all accounts, he shouldn't have made it, but he did.

So many times in the middle of an interview I've had people say, 'Can we go off the record?'

Though addiction is a disease - a brain disease that's often progressive - addicts who relapse are often blamed.

I finally stopped worrying what people would think. I found out that almost everybody has some secret, some dark fear that if people knew this about them they wouldn't like them anymore, or would look down on them.

You know, we think about addiction as a morally reprehensible choice, but addicts act crazy because, in a way, that they are.

No, I don't believe in tough love. I just believe in love.

Since his breakout role in 'Call Me By Your Name,' Chalamet has been described as a young Leonardo DeCaprio and James Dean. Not only does Chalamet resemble my son when he was younger, but he embodies his spirit.

The tragic fact is that with addiction, like many other illnesses, sometimes you can do everything right and people die.

Certain people are more likely to use drugs because of whatever it is: They've suffered some trauma in their life. They have risk factors like mental illness, people with learning disabilities, with attention problems.

Drugs shift the way that we think. So, yeah, the logical thing would be to get help, but that's not the way addicts operate, which is why it's really, really hard to get someone to understand that they need treatment.