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.

I have a daughter who reminds me too much of what I used to be, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. And that terrifies me to the point to where I can barely function. —KURT COBAIN, in his suicide note

“Addicts may have many complaints, including major and minor grievances from years past. Some of their accusations may, in fact, have truth in them. Families may well have caused pain for the addicts. They may well have failed the addicts in some significant way. (After all, what human relationship is perfect?) But addicts bring up these problems

Your reward for your hard work in recovery is that you come headlong into the pain that you were trying to get away from with drugs.

At this point, I am not sanguine about rehab, but I allow myself a sliver of hope. As in the Springsteen song, “At the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe.” Mine is a mix of this hope and, once again, tenuous relief because I know where he is.

“What is turned on here is exactly what turns on while people feel pain.” The operative word is while. She goes on, “A person stops using methamphetamine, and this is awaiting them.” Clinicians who work with meth addicts already know that addicts are often depressed, argumentative, anxious, and unwilling to engage in treatment—exactly like Nic—but

After one lunchtime meeting, at which I briefly speak—I shakily begin, “My son is in rehab again”—a woman approaches and timidly hands me a pamphlet called “3 Views of Al-Anon.” “It helps me,” she says. At home, I read it. From “Letter from an Addict” in the pamphlet: “Don’t accept my promises. I’ll promise anything to get off the hook. But the

In the afternoon, Nic calls. He tells me everything—he has relapsed, is using meth and heroin. I have rehearsed my response. I shakily tell him that there’s nothing I can do. It’s up to him. I say that the police are searching for him, that his mother reported him missing to the Santa Monica police, and that the Marin sheriffs are patrolling our

look the same way at a drunk or a stoner, whether at a party or in books or movies. Hunter Thompson’s accounts of his gluttonous drugging and drinking are no longer funny to me. They are pathetic.