Trying the same thing and expecting different results is the height of insanity

Trying the same thing and expecting different results is the height of insanity is an Alcoholics Anonymous saying that frames the book’s struggle over repeated treatment attempts. Its force comes from a contradiction: repetition can look futile, yet addiction recovery may require more than one attempt, and the family cannot simply stop trying while Nic remains in danger.

The Saying and the Treatment Dilemma

The narrator introduces the saying alongside a competing lesson from rehabilitation: someone may need multiple tries to get sober and remain so. A letter from a father whose twenty-year-old daughter died of an overdose makes the stakes of deciding whether to try again painfully concrete. The narrator then considers Richard Rawson’s advice that, if a child continued dangerous methamphetamine use despite efforts to help, a parent should keep pushing toward treatment as far as their resources allowed and link support to entering treatment. The saying does not resolve this dilemma; it names the apparent absurdity of another attempt while the risk of giving up remains just as real.

Nic’s Promise of a Different Outcome

Nic calls with a new plan after he and his girlfriend have finished their methamphetamine supply. He says he will not return to rehabilitation and insists that this time will be different: they will prevent each other from using, call the police if either slips, and end the relationship if it happens. The details make the promise sound like a system of safeguards, but the narrator recognizes it as another version of assurances Nic has made before. The saying therefore applies not only to the family’s repeated efforts to get Nic into treatment, but also to Nic’s repeated belief that a new vow will change the outcome without treatment.

The Narrator Caught in the Repetition

The saying returns as the narrator turns its logic on himself. He recalls repeatedly promising not to live in panic, waiting to learn whether Nic will appear or check himself into treatment. He resolves, “I will not do it again,” and then immediately admits, “I am doing it again.” That reversal transforms the maxim from a judgment about other people’s behavior into an account of the narrator’s own repeated cycle of fear and resolve. The expression’s significance lies in this double bind: trying again may be necessary, but the narrator also sees how the attempt to escape the pattern becomes part of its recurrence.