Beautiful Boy Quotes

People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague—an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families. For whatever reason, a stranger’s story seemed to give them permission to tell theirs. They felt that I would understand, and I did.

Whatever the cause—a genetic predisposition, the divorce, my drug history, my overprotectiveness, my failure to protect him, my leniency, my harshness, my immaturity, all of these—Nic’s addiction seemed to have had a life of its own. I have tried to reveal how insidiously addiction creeps into a family and takes over […] in the hope that readers will recognize a wrong path before they take it. If they don’t, however, I hope they may realize that it is a path they can’t blame themselves for having taken.

Other comments from his teachers are effusive praise of his creativity, sense of humor, compassion, participation, and stellar work.

I keep a box in which I store his artwork and writings, like his response to an assignment in which he has been asked if you should always try your best. “I don’t think you should always try your best all the time,” he writes, “because, let’s say a drug atick asks you for drugs you should not try your best to find him some drugs.”

Many drug counselors tell parents of my generation to lie to our children about our past drug use. […] Kids see that their parents turned out all right in spite of the drugs. So maybe I should have lied to Nic and kept my drug use hidden, but I didn’t. He knew the truth. Meanwhile, our close relationship made me feel certain that I would know if he were exposed to them. I naively believed that if Nic were tempted to try them, he would tell me. I was wrong.

I look at the three of them and recall a bewildering emotion that I recognized for the first time back when Nic was born. Along with the joy of parenthood, with every child comes a piercing vulnerability. It is at once sublime and terrifying.

Drug stories are sinister. Like some war stories, they focus on adventure and escape. In the tradition of a long line of famous and infamous carousers and their chroniclers, even hangovers and near-death experiences and visits to the emergency room can be made to seem glamorous. But often the storytellers omit the slow degeneration, psychic trauma, and, finally, the casualties.

Finally someone has said it: so it is my fault that Nic has been increasingly sullen and shadowy and taking drugs and is now lying and stealing. I was too lenient. I am ready to bear this judgment, to accept that I have blown it, though I do wonder about the children in trouble whose parents were overly strict and those who were far more lenient than me and yet whose children appear to be fine.

Meth users include men and women of every class, race, and background. Though the current epidemic has its roots in motorcycle gangs and lower-class rural and suburban neighborhoods, meth, as Newsweek reported in a 2005 cover story, has marched across the country and up the socioeconomic ladder.

He’s in denial. It’s typical of addicts, who maintain and believe that everything is all right, they can stop when they want, everyone else has a problem but not them, they are fine, even if they wind up losing everything, even if they are on the streets, even if they wind up in jail or in the hospital.

He says that one of the most difficult things about having a child addicted to drugs is that we cannot control it. We cannot save Nic. “You can support his recovery but you can’t do it for him,” he says. “We try to save them. Parents try. It’s what parents do.”

He tells us Al-Anon’s Three Cs: “You didn’t cause it, you can’t control it, you can’t cure it.”

It led her to conclude that meth addicts may be unable, not unwilling, to participate in many common treatments, at least in the early stages of withdrawal. Rather than a moral failure or a lack of willpower, dropping out and relapsing may be a result of a damaged brain.

It’s a tricky illness. Yes, people do have choices about what to do about it. It’s the same with an illness like diabetes. A diabetic can choose to monitor his insulin levels and take his medication; an addict can choose to treat his disease through recovery. In both cases, if they don’t treat their illnesses, they worsen and the person can die.

“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. […] 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.”

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 has a disease, but addiction is the most baffling of all diseases, unique in the blame, shame, and humiliation that accompany it.
It is not Nic’s fault that he has a disease, but it is his fault that he relapses, since he is the only one who can do the work necessary to prevent relapse. Whether or not it’s his fault, he must be held accountable.

I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. […] He’s just experimenting. Going through a stage. It’s only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he’s not using hard drugs. At least it’s not heroin. He would never resort to needles. At least he’s alive. I have also learned (the hard way because, as it turns out, there’s no other way to learn such lessons) that parents are more flexible with our hopes and dreams for our children than we ever imagined.

Jasper responds, “I don’t think he wants to do them, but he can’t help it. It’s like in cartoons when some character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil whispers into Nicky’s ear and sometimes it gets too loud so he has to listen to him. The angel is there, too,” Jasper continues, “but he talks softer and Nic can’t hear him.”

I guess what I can offer you is this: As you’re growing up, whenever you need me—to talk or just whatever—I’ll be able to be there for you now. That is something that I could never promise you before. I will be here for you. I will live, and build a life, and be someone that you can depend on. I hope that means more than this stupid note and these eight dollar bills.

I have learned that I am all but irrelevant to Nic’s survival. It took my near death, however, to comprehend that his fate—and Jasper’s and Daisy’s—is separate from mine. I can try to protect my children, to help and guide them, and I can love them, but I cannot save them. Nic, Jasper, and Daisy will live, and someday they will die, with or without me.

In recovery working with Randy, Nic was the one who explained the insidiousness to me: “A using addict cannot trust his own brain—it lies, says, ‘You can have one drink, a joint, a single line, just one.’” It tells him, “I have moved beyond my sponsor.” It says, “I don’t require the obsessive and vigilant recovery program I needed when I was emerging from the relapse.” […] And so Nic said he couldn’t trust his own brain and needed to rely on Randy, meetings, the program, and prayer—yes, prayer—to go forward.

Addicts’ families walk an unhappy path that is strewn with many pitfalls and false starts. Mistakes are inevitable. Pain is inevitable. But so are growth and wisdom and serenity if families approach addiction with an open mind, a willingness to learn, and the acceptance that recovery like addiction itself, is a long and complex process. Families should never give up hope for recovery—for recovery can and does happen every day. Nor should they stop living their own lives while they wait for that miracle of recovery to occur.

The phone, when it rings, brings on the same state of panic. I am always worried that there is news of another crisis. Or it’s Nic, and I don’t know if he will be sane or high. Or it won’t be him, and I’ll be disappointed. My body tenses up. Oftentimes during meals or when we’re hanging around in the evening, I let the phone ring until the answering service picks it up, because I don’t want to deal with whatever might be coming. I think that everyone feels tension.

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.

“The mortality rates from unintentional drug overdose have risen steadily since the early 1970s, and over the past ten years they have reached historic highs.” First-time users are younger, the drugs themselves are stronger, and there are many more types of drugs to abuse. Users can get their drug of choice whenever and wherever they want. Yet in spite of these facts, the federal government boasts that we’re making progress.

Can we cure addiction? Again, despite thirty-five years of aggressive research, many cases of cancer resist treatment. But we have made dramatic progress. And in the process we’ve relieved incalculable suffering, saved hundreds of millions of dollars, and saved millions of lives. A war on addiction would do the same—and more. By dramatically decreasing emergency room visits and prison populations, we’d eventually free up funds to treat other illnesses, improving health care across the board. We’d eliminate much homelessness and dramatically reduce violence, including child abuse, spousal abuse, and violent crime. We’d help families stay together and repair broken neighborhoods. We’d alleviate immeasurable suffering.