Quotes About Support

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 didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it.

Why does it help to read others' stories? It is not only that misery loves company, because (I learned) misery is too self-absorbed to want much company. Others' experiences did help with my emotional struggle...

Here's a note to the parents of addicted children: Choose your music carefully...There are millions of treacherous moments.

Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything....I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate....It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs....

Caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.

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.

But here's the rub of addiction. By its nature, people afflicted are unable to do what, from the outside, appears to be a simple solution—don't drink. Don't use drugs. In exchange for that one small sacrifice, you will be given a gift that other terminally ill people would give anything for: life.

Giving cash to a using addict is like handing a loaded gun to someone on the verge of suicide.

An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie about it. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it." Part of me is convinced that he actually believes that he will find it for you.

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

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

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.

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

For heroin users with a five-year history of addiction, it may take ten or fifteen years to help them come out of it, but if you start when they're twenty-five, by the time they're forty they're pretty much rehabbed. If you don't, most of them burn out by forty.

Even as all the experts kindly tell the parents of addicts, "You didn't cause it," I have not let myself off the hook. I often feel as if I completely failed my son. In admitting this, I am not looking for sympathy or absolution, but instead stating a truth that will be recognized by most parents who have been through this.

Maybe parents feel for every child.

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?

The more, and the louder, we come out today, the easier it will be for those who can't do so until tomorrow.

A little anger is a good thing if it isn't on your own behalf, if it's for others deserving of your anger, your empathy.

Seniors in turn don't benefit from our ability to help them with their end-of-life tasks. They become developmental orphans, and their search for legacy, which must be helped along by caring younger adults, doesn't take place.

The universe works with you and for you. It is not your enemy.

If you ever feel the person in your life needs rescuing, particularly from him or herself - beware. Codependency is rearing its head again.