David Sheff Quotes & Sayings

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. — David Sheff

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. — David Sheff

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

He had black fingernails and drove a hearse. Everything about him cried out, 'Look at me, look at me,' and when you looked at him, he would snap, 'Who the fuck are you looking at?' 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. — David Sheff

That's when it struck me that I can't take my life as long as I can still laugh. — David Sheff

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

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

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 ... — David Sheff

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 ... — David Sheff

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

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. — David Sheff

I tried everything I could to prevent my son's fall into meth addiction. It would have been no easier to have seen him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a meth addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality. In an interview, Stephan Jenkins, the singer in Third Eye Blind, said that meth makes you feel "bright and shiny." It also makes you paranoid, delusional, destructive, and self-destructive. Then you will do unconscionable things in order to feel bright and shiny again. — David Sheff

I know there is no point in haranguing him because he will just shut down, but I want to cover every angle. — David Sheff

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. — David Sheff

I didn't cause it. I can't control it. I can't cure it. — David Sheff

If Nintendo had been an American company playing by the rules such companies follow, it would have given up long before there was any indication of success - that is, after Arakawa's original market surveys, when the AVS failed, or when there was resistance at the first trade shows. Many American companies are so wedded to market research that the devastating results of focus groups have signaled death knells. Had Nintendo been American, the company would probably have retreated when retailers in New York declined to place orders, or when it took more than a year for big sales numbers to appear. But commitment to an idea and pure tenacity are inherent in Japanese business philosophy - and certainly to Japanese business successes. — David Sheff

Most people could not pronounce Nintendo and were not interested in learning how. — David Sheff

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. — David Sheff

This is the way that misery does love company: 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 [drugs]
an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families. — David Sheff

In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy. — David Sheff

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

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 — David Sheff

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. — David Sheff

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. — David Sheff

But here's the rub of addiction. By its nature, people afflicted are unable to do what, from the outside, appears to be a simple solution - don't drink. Don't use drugs. In exchange for that one small sacrifice, you will be given a gift that other terminally ill people would give anything for: life. — David Sheff

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

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

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

Jasper, who is six, is the only one of us who responds appropriately. He wails, inconsolable for an hour. — David Sheff

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. — David Sheff

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

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