I consider addiction and substance abuse to be a reaction to a condition we find intolerable — especially intrusive thoughts and feelings. When your life gets organized around anything that destroys your mind, body and relationships, it seems like nothing can affect you, nothing really matters. When you are ready to do something about it, it’s not going to be about will power; it isn’t about bootstrapping; and it isn’t about going it alone. What it IS about is down-to-earth, no bull-shit, real experiences of human contact in whatever form you can tolerate. Human contact is not part of the addictive world so if we work on these issues together, we both sign up to face and live through the hard work of discovering what you’ve shut out and why.

“The drug you loved so through and through has no feelings back for you.”
-Lisa age 15.

from: Things I have to tell you: Poems and writings by teenage girls.
Edited by Betsy Franco; Candlewick Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.
2001