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David Sheff

David Sheff Biography

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“Minoru and Yoko spent many evenings at video arcades. They looked over players' shoulders until it made young kids nervous. "What the fuck's your problem, mister?" one kid in a Kiss T-shirt barked at Minoru. Arakawa asked him, "Would you like a job?" He watched kids stand in front of the machines, transfixed, their hands melded to controllers, their bony arms like umbilical cords joining human and machine. He asked the kids questions about what made a game good. Arakawa realized that the most successful games had something the players couldn't articulate. The words used to describe them were those usually reserved to describe forms of intimacy between people. It was as if the players and the game itself somehow merged.”

GamesObsessionManMachineNintendo
Book:Game Over, Press Start to Continue: How Nintendo Conquered the World
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“A handsome woman with auburn hair cut short, wearing a silk blouse, cardigan, and wool pants, says that she is a doctor. Deeply sad, she admits that for more than a year she conducted surgeries while high on meth. She initially tried it at a party. "I felt better than I had ever felt before in my life," she says. "I felt as if I could do anything. I never ever wanted to lose that feeling.”

AddictionMethamphetamine
Book:Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
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“The seventh and eighth grade were for me, and for every single good and interesting person I have ever known, what the writers of the bible meant when they used the words hell and pit...It was all over for any small feeling that one was essentially all right. One wasn't...It was springtime, for Hitler, in Germany. Anne Lamott”

HumorSide Note
Book:Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
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“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.”

Inspirational
Book:Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
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“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.”

PeopleIfsFeelsReasonAcceptingPolicyEssentialsDiseaseBehaviorApproachResearchTreatsAddictionIllnessCriticalReason WhyAddictPublic PolicyBad BehaviorCriminality
Book:Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy
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“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.”

IfsChildrenIdeasWould BeKidsCasesStreetsDyingSceneDiseaseAddictionIllHospitalsAnxiousParanoidPsychoticBruisedWithered
Book:Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
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