Like so many of us, I'm brokenhearted about the death of the remarkably talented actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.
The war on drugs is a joke. We spend $40 billion a year, and the proof that it's a failure is that any kid can get almost any drug they want in any city in America within half an hour.
Like most people I knew, I thought drug addicts were the kinds of people we see in doorways in neighbourhoods most of us try to avoid - people obviously strung out, often homeless and possibly psychotic. I didn't think my son could become addicted, but he had.
Nick spent his first years on walks in his stroller and Snugli, playing in Berkeley parks and baby gyms and visiting zoos and aquariums. His mother and I divorced when he was 4. No child benefits from the bitterness and savagery of a divorce like ours.
You know, we think about addiction as a morally reprehensible choice, but addicts act crazy because, in a way, that they are.
Though addiction is a disease - a brain disease that's often progressive - addicts who relapse are often blamed.
