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.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

Time Life Unit

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.

David Sheff

Home Wing Win

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.

David Sheff

Video Games Video T

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

David Sheff

Good Anger Very

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.

David Sheff

Men Years Year

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

David Sheff

Wit UN Tree

At some point, parents may become inured to a child's self-destruction, but I never did.

David Sheff

T Some Self-Destruction

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

David Sheff

Love Whimsical Whim

Everyone's generation probably feels like they're parenting in a better way.

David Sheff

Parenting Way Very

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.

David Sheff

Age Zoo Yin

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

David Sheff

T Son Shame

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.

David Sheff

Fear Yin Would

If you love someone who's an addict and their use is life-threatening, you don't wait until they hit bottom because that can mean that they're going to die. You have to do everything you can to get them in treatment.

David Sheff

Men Love Life

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

David Sheff

Years Year Would

So often we have this image of what drug addiction looks like, and it's not fun. Our loved ones who go down that path are in pain.

David Sheff

Love Age Who

Like so many of us, I'm brokenhearted about the death of the remarkably talented actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

David Sheff

Death Art Us

To try to help somebody who doesn't want to be helped is ludicrous. It doesn't work.

David Sheff

Work Who Want

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.

David Sheff

War Movies World

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.

David Sheff

You Very Us

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

David Sheff

Change Takes Take

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.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

There are many things I wish I could redo as a parent.

David Sheff

Relapse is very dangerous. However, relapse can be a symptom of the disease. Sometimes there are multiple relapses before you get sober and stay sober.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

The war on drugs is a joke. We spend $40 billion a year, and the proof that it's a failure is that any kid can get almost any drug they want in any city in America within half an hour.

David Sheff

I have my limited skills as a journalist and a father, and the journalist part is really part of my mindset, to use my skills to try to solve problems.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

Addiction is a disease like anything else. It's like cancer, like heart disease, like diabetes.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

Your children live or die without you. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It's a devastating realization, but liberating.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

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?

David Sheff

But I sent letters to people in the music business. And one day I got a phone call from somebody and he asked me when I was born and where I was born. And, you know, three or four days later I got a call. Someone said, you know, Yoko Ono wanted to meet me in New York. I got on a plane. And the next day I was having coffee with John Lennon.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

Nick's mother and I were attentive, probably overly attentive - part of the first wave of parents obsessed with our children in a self-conscious way.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff

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.

David Sheff