Best 41 quotes of David Sheff on MyQuotes

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Once and for all, people must understand that addiction is a disease. It’s critical if we’re going to effectively prevent and treat addiction. Accepting that addiction is an illness will transform our approach to public policy, research, insurance, and criminality; it will change how we feel about addicts, and how they feel about themselves. There’s another essential reason why we must understand that addiction is an illness and not just bad behavior: We punish bad behavior. We treat illness.

Openness is the first step toward recovery... addiction remains a secret because of the overwhelming shame associated with it.

The hopeful part about that is when you do have that help, you will feel better. It still doesn't make this easy. Nothing makes this easy, but you can make better decisions.

This stigma associated with drug use--the belief that bad kids use, good kids don't, and those with full-blown addiction are weak, dissolute, and pathetic--has contributed to the escalation of use and has hampered treatment more than any single other factor.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A handsome woman with auburn hair cut short, wearing a silk blouse, cardigan, and wool pants, says that she is a doctor. Deeply sad, she admits that for more than a year she conducted surgeries while high on meth. She initially tried it at a party. "I felt better than I had ever felt before in my life," she says. "I felt as if I could do anything. I never ever wanted to lose that feeling.

Fentanyl is fifty times stronger than heroin. Another concern is an opioid called carfentanil, which is as much as one hundred times more potent than fentanyl. According to the New York Times, an amount smaller than a snowflake could kill a person.

Fortunately I have a son, my beautiful boy. Unfortunately he is a drug addict. Fortunately he is in recovery. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is in recovery again. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is in recovery again. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is not dead.

Fortunately I have a son, my beautiful boy Unfortunately he is a drug addict. Fortunately he is in recovery. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is in recovery again. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is not dead.

Fortunately there is a beautiful boy, unfortunately he has a terrible disease. Fortunately there is love and joy, unfortunately there is pain and misery. Fortunately this story is not over.

... 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

Here's a note to the parents of addicted children: choose your music carefully. Avoid Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World", from the Polaroid or Kodak or whichever commercial, and the songs "Turn Around" and "Sunrise, Sunset" and - there are thousands more. Avoid Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," and this one, Eric Clapton's song about his son. Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" sneaked up on me one time. The music doesn't have to be sentimental. Springsteen can be dangerous. John and Yoko. Bjork. Dylan. I become overwhelmed when I hear Nirvana. I want to scream like Kurt Cobain. I want to scream at him. Music isn't all that does it. There are millions of treacherous moments. Driving along Highway 1, I will see a peeling wave. Or I will reach the fork where two roads meet near Rancho Nicasio, where we veered to the left in carpool. A shooting star on a still night at the crest of Olema Hill. With friends, I hear a good joke - one that Nic would appreciate. The kids do something funny or endearing. A story. A worn sweater. A movie. Feeling wind and looking up, riding my bike. A million moments.

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

I felt the same way about my son until I realized that he couldn't get to school or work or a therapy appointment but he could get to pawn shops, get to his dealers, get whatever drug he wanted, get alcohol, break into houses, get needles — whatever was required. It's a fairly sophisticated process to cook a batch of methamphetamine, but I felt so sorry for him, thinking, He's depressed. He's fragile. He's incapable. Of course I should pay his bill if he winds up in the hospital. Of course I should pay his rent or he'll be on the streets. So for about a year I paid for a comfortable place for him to get high.

I see Nic on the plane. I see him as he is - frail, opaque, ill - my beloved son, my beautiful boy. "Everything," I say to him. "Everything." Fortunately there is a beautiful boy. Unfortunately he has a terrible disease. Fortunately there is love and joy. Unfortunately there is pain and misery. Fortunately the story is not over.

I want to come down," Nic said suddenly. "It's OK, Nic. You're fine. Just take it slowly." "I can't," he called. "I'm stuck." "You can," I said. "You can do it." "I can't get down." He began crying. "Take your time," I said. "Find one foothold at a time. Go slowly." "I can't." "You can." He wrapped his gangly legs and arms tighter around the branch. "I'll fall." "You won't." "I will." I stood directly underneath and yelled up to him, "You're fine. Take your time." I said it, but I was thinking, I'll catch you if you fall.

Minoru and Yoko spent many evenings at video arcades. They looked over players' shoulders until it made young kids nervous. "What the fuck's your problem, mister?" one kid in a Kiss T-shirt barked at Minoru. Arakawa asked him, "Would you like a job?" He watched kids stand in front of the machines, transfixed, their hands melded to controllers, their bony arms like umbilical cords joining human and machine. He asked the kids questions about what made a game good. Arakawa realized that the most successful games had something the players couldn't articulate. The words used to describe them were those usually reserved to describe forms of intimacy between people. It was as if the players and the game itself somehow merged.

My drawing - now there are drops, tears, from the two branches of the tributary and six circles above it. Then I know - I have drawn the opening up of my brain and all that is in there - tears pain blood rage terror. The broken suitcase with the circles, its contents - me, former me - spilling out.

Nic begins writing hard, a word, I, two words, am, three words, sorry, writes them again, writes them again, writes them again, writes them again. He cannot, it seems, stop writing them. It is bullshit, a cheap attempt at - it is not bullshit, he is trying with excruciating desperation, which I can feel coming from him, to say something, to get out something that he cannot get out. It's easy to forget that no matter how hard it is for us, it is harder for him.

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.

Now the children are asleep. Karen and I are in bed reading. Brutus is running in his sleep. I put down my book and lie here, trying to comprehend exactly what it is that I'm feeling. Parents of addicts learn to temper our hope even as we never completely lose hope. However, we are terrified of optimism, fearful that it will be punished. It is safer to shut down. But I am open again, and as a consequence I feel the pain and joy of the past and worry about and hope for the future. I know what it is I feel. Everything.

One girl, Nic's friend, says how different the images are in our family's pictures and how intense each one is, but she says that Nic's heart leads into ventricles and my stream of chalk looks like a broken artery. Somehow I am crying. Nic's hand is on my shoulder.

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

Sometimes I am all right. Is this what they call letting go? I have let go, if letting go means I am all right sometimes.

Substance abusers lie about everything, and usually do an awesome job of it." Stephen King once wrote. "It's the liar's disease." Nic once told me, quoting an AA platitude, "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.

Why do I want to meet him? No matter how unrealistic, I retain a sliver of hope that I can get through to him. That's not quite accurate. I know I can't, but at least I can put my fingertips on his cheek.