We hope that feel encouraged empowered to take the first step of asking for help (which can lead to a long, happy, and sober life). An author came to our school, Steven Cosan, and he told us about this flash fiction contest where we could send in a poem or short story and I sent in 'The Promising,'" said Olivia. A renewed interest in Lundquist’s work in recent years has resurrected his need to create, and we are all the better for it. Swirls of smoke are everywhere like little aspirations or spirits who’ve been here but never wanted to flee, the swirling smoke circles all around me…. Addiction is addiction s far as I am concerned - the fall out and behaviours are the same regardless of the cause.

Delaney’s obituary and her father’s Facebook video have been flooded with comments from people offering their condolences, as well as sharing their own stories of having family members who struggle with addiction. Let the following poem about unrelenting guts and drive to stop abusing drugs inspire you to make a positive change in your life today. This went on for years my friend and me we ruled we thought that we had everything we felt ten feet tall.In The Heroin Addict's Mother, renowned psychologist Miriam Greenspan gifts us with intensely personal, forceful, and courageous poems that speak not only to mothers of addicted children, but to all of us who have feared and fought for our children to be safe and well.

The poetry of Robert Lundquist is distinctive for a certain vulnerability, as sensitive as plasmodium, and as impalpable, suggesting a virtual seethe of interior quickening, only minimally obscured by his skin. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Harper’s, the New Republic, the New York Times, The Nation, and many other magazine and journals. But you'll forget your morals and how you were raised, I'll be your conscience, I'll teach you my ways.

These unflinching poems take us deep into the psyche of a mother whose daughter has been taken over by addiction. If you decide to jump I my saddle, you had better ride me well, for on the white horse of cocaine, I’ll ride you straight to HELL. As a mother of a son who died of a heroin overdose, I can say that these poems echo the complicated breaks in my own heart. SELF may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers.