San Diego is the destination of Nic’s summer marine-biology program, a place associated with new interests, surfboards, scuba diving, and a brief experience of independence. The narrative later widens beyond this particular California episode to examine methamphetamine use as a national public-health problem, while cautioning against treating geography or social background as a sufficient explanation for addiction.

Setting and Arrival

As Nic’s sophomore year approaches its end, Don tells him about a marine-biology program at the University of California, San Diego. Nic brings home a brochure and application from the program’s website and asks to attend; after conferring with Vicki, his parents agree that he should apply. The account presents the opportunity as an extension of an interest Don has encouraged, and as a step Nic himself actively seeks.

The family travels to San Diego in late June. After landing, collecting their suitcases, and renting a car, they drive north to the turnoff for La Jolla and take Nic to the university campus to check in. He is nervous, but the other students seem welcoming; the surfboards several have brought provide a familiar point of connection. At goodbye, Daisy wraps her arms around Nic’s neck, and he reassures her that he will see her soon.

The Program and Its Aftermath

Nic phones home regularly and reports that he is enjoying the program. He considers marine biology as a possible future direction, gets up early with other surfers to walk down the steep trail to Black’s Beach before classes, and decides to complete the camp’s scuba-diving certification. On a night dive near Catalina Island, he swims with a pod of dolphins. These details make San Diego a setting for exploration: science, surfing, and diving are not simply interests described from afar but activities Nic pursues among other students.

When the program ends, Vicki collects him and he spends the rest of the summer in Los Angeles. The stay in San Diego is therefore a defined summer interlude rather than a permanent move. Nic returns home to prepare for his junior year, carrying forward the possibility of marine biology as one of the futures he has imagined.

A Local Episode in a National Picture

Elsewhere, the narrative moves from Nic’s family experience to the changing scale of methamphetamine use in the United States. It describes a drug problem that had once been concentrated in western cities but had spread into the Midwest, South, and East Coast. In 2006, a survey of 3,400 drug-enforcement agencies found that 40 percent identified methamphetamine as their most significant drug problem, the first time a plurality had done so in that survey. This national evidence does not establish a San Diego-specific rate; it places the family’s story within a wider account of the drug’s reach.

Treatment figures underscore that expansion. Admissions for methamphetamine addiction rose from 28,000 in 1993 to about 150,000 in 2005, more than a fivefold increase, and a 2006 federal report characterized admissions as surging. The account also stresses that addiction crosses economic, educational, racial, and geographic boundaries. It offers no basis for making San Diego, or any single social circumstance, the cause of an individual’s addiction; instead, it leaves open an uncertain combination of nature and nurture. San Diego’s significance in the narrative remains grounded in the summer Nic spends there, while the broader public-health discussion resists reducing addiction to one place or one kind of family.