Quotes from David Sheff

One of my dearest friends is alive only because of AA. But it doesn't help a lot of people. And everyone is different, and everyone needs different kinds of treatments.

I chose a rehab center for Nic that was recommended by a friend who had sent her son there. The program lasted 28 days, after which he relapsed. Over the next six years, he was admitted to six residential treatment programs and four outpatient programs. He would do better for a while, but then relapse. Each relapse was crushing.

I came to understand that Nic on drugs was not the Nic I knew and trusted. Nic on drugs was somebody else. We were afraid of him.

There isn't just one way to get healthy and sober and to stop using.

Reading Bukowski and Burroughs and Henry Miller doesn't necessarily mean that a kid is going to try to emulate their debauchery to the point that Nic did, but he really was fascinated by it.

Nick spent his first years on walks in his stroller and Snugli, playing in Berkeley parks and baby gyms and visiting zoos and aquariums. His mother and I divorced when he was 4. No child benefits from the bitterness and savagery of a divorce like ours.

Like most people I knew, I thought drug addicts were the kinds of people we see in doorways in neighbourhoods most of us try to avoid - people obviously strung out, often homeless and possibly psychotic. I didn't think my son could become addicted, but he had.

After writing about addiction in a pair of books, I frequently hear from addicts and their family members about serial relapses followed by treatments followed by more relapses. It's not uncommon for addicts to go through a dozen treatment programs.

Everybody tells you over and over again that addiction is a disease. But when I read Nic's book I understood not just that this is a disease, but what the disease means.

When, you know, when Nic became addicted, I was completely uneducated, and basically everything I assumed at the time turned out to be wrong. I guess the main thing is that I was so blindsided, that I had this idea of, you know, what an addict looks like, and it didn't look like Nic. And I realized that, you know, anybody can become addicted.

Having been hit by drug addiction, knowing how many are hit by it and what a big problem it is in our neighborhoods and our culture, I feel a responsibility to do something. I can see what's wrong with the system - that we have to recognize mental illness as we do cancer or broken bones - and how we need to make it better.

After a hellish decade, my son got and stayed sober.

The motivations for using drugs, often it's pretty obvious and common: you know, peer pressure. You know, kids are struggling growing up.

When he was on the streets, I was consumed with Nic. I was obsessed with him to the point that I could barely function.

This idea that some kids have now in some communities that if they haven't filled out their college resumes by the time they're 12, they are going to fail in life, it's a lot of stress on kids.

... Gunpei Yokoi, asked his boss, 'What should I make?' Nintendo chief executive Hiroshi Yamauchi replied, 'Something great.'Game Over Nintendo's Battle to Dominate Videogames

Well, addiction does start with a choice.

I was ashamed. My son is a drug addict. What does this mean about me?

Few adults realize what a huge force video games have become in children's lives.

The rest of the world may devour Japanese hardware - from Honda Civics to Sony Walkmans - but Japanese software, such as books, movies and recordings, has had little impact outside Japan. The exception is video games.

That's the difference between even the best video game and what's going on in books. Video games can inspire a reaction, but not the emotions.

Many doctors are stuck in the idea that addiction is a choice, and they don't treat that.

When I was a child, my parents didn't know anything about drugs. They didn't even drink.

I totally believe parents should talk to their kids about drugs. I totally believe that educating them in every way is really important. But on the other hand, I've learned it's not as simple as that.