Well, addiction does start with a choice.
— 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.
Addiction is a disease like anything else. It's like cancer, like heart disease, like diabetes.
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.
Certain people are more likely to use drugs because of whatever it is: They've suffered some trauma in their life. They have risk factors like mental illness, people with learning disabilities, with attention problems.
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.
There isn't just one way to get healthy and sober and to stop using.
Every relapse is dangerous, but often it takes multiple relapses before someone finally gets sober for good.
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.
You know, we think about addiction as a morally reprehensible choice, but addicts act crazy because, in a way, that they are.
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.
