Jane Adams

About the author: Jane Adams is a Seattle-based writer whose most recent book is I'm Still Your Mother: How to Get Along with Your Grown-up Children for the Rest of Your Life.

Heroin addiction does not just affect the addict—it also affects the addict's family. An increasing number of affluent parents are having to cope with the knowledge that their adult children are heroin addicts as more young people discover that recreational use of heroin quickly turns to addiction. When parents learn of their child's addiction to heroin, they often react with disbelief, guilt, anger, and despair and need help coping with these emotions.

They sit together on the tweed couch in the crowded, overheated library of a brick and stucco church, a handsome, prosperous-looking couple in their late 50s...