David Sheff

“That's when it struck me that I can't take my life as long as I can still laugh.”

“A world of contradictions, wherein everything is gray and almost nothing is black and white.”

“Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying”

“... 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”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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....”

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

“I am becoming used to an overwhelming, grinding mixture of anger and worry...”

“How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?”

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

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

“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...”

“An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.”

“He had black fingernails and drove a hearse. Everything about him cried out, 'Look at me, look at me,' and when you looked at him, he would snap, 'Who the fuck are you looking at?' If you subscribe to the idea that addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children- paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets.”

“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.”

“How innocent we are of our mistakes and how we responsible we are for them.”

“In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy.”