I agree Ray - his kids are ultimately hurt the most.

Skip - I'm afraid it is not always so easy for everyone to put the party lifestyle behind and grow up. I was married to an addict for several years and saw the struggle to get clean many times. It isn't easy. It does take a serious commitment on the part of the addict, but even with that, the pull of the drug is hard to ignore, especially if something goes wrong or they have a bad day that the rest of us would just shrug off.

Addiction is literally a demon, and unfortunately there are more addicts that fail than succeed in learning to live without drugs. I don't remember the exact statistic from a CA (cocaine anonymous) meeting that I attended with my ex, but it was something like 90% of addicts will relapse at least once, and most will relapse multiple times.