“But I learned that my preoccupation with Nic didn’t help him and may have harmed him. Or maybe it was irrelevant to him. However, it surely harmed the rest of my family—and me.”

Sheff’s struggle to overcome his codependent addiction to Nic’s addiction is one of the key themes of the book. As the story progresses, he slowly learns to drop his denial and his need to save his son. He begins to accept that he is powerless and that his efforts are highly damaging to himself, his wife, and his other children. 

“He does not seem to tire of some discoveries—Björk, Tom Waits, Bowie—but otherwise he is into the edgiest music and then grows bored with it.”

Nic’s restless search for the edgiest music is highly symbolic. On one level, it represents his early refusal to bow to peer pressure, something which later fades, potentially leading to his drug addiction. On another level, it mirrors his search for experience and the way he will later try, and tire of, a variety of drugs before he finds methamphetamine. 

“I think: Do I trust him? This too is a radically confounding proposition, one that has never crossed my mind. Of course I trust him. He wouldn’t lie to me. Would he lie?”

When Nic was younger, he and Sheff had a remarkably close relationship. Sheff naively believes this means he can trust Nic to always be honest, even about drugs. After Sheff finds a bag of marijuana among Nic’s belongings, he is forced to confront for the first time the possibility that this may not be the case.