Separating is part of parenting, and the time must come, early for some, later for others, to loosen the grip so the chills can grow up. At a certain point, you are no longer responsible for your child’s life, debts, or the consequences of his or her behavior.

This letting go should be gentle. A parent does not have to abandon the child or drop him with a thud—no matter how old he is. Letting go means gentle release, with love, perhaps even support of one kind or another.

If the addiction continues or keeps recurring, you must realize that no matter what you do, you cannot make the difference. A New York psychotherapist tells parents of adults who are hooked on cocaine or crack to view the addiction as a terminal disease. “It follows an inexorable course and we really don’t know how to deal with it very well.” He says. “If parents can see it this way, they aren’t so bitter and they can accept their own helplessness. They can also understand the helplessness of their child.”

Even when things aren’t this bad, parents often hold on too long. It’s almost a reflex action to try to protect the twenty-nine-year-old as you did the nine-year-old. A successful lawyer views with amused tolerance his mother who still asks him each time they’re about to get into the car for a long ride, “Do you want to go to the bathroom, dear?”

If you are still too deeply immersed in the problems of your drug-using child, you have to decide just how much you can or should do. If you can’t persuade or threaten your child into getting help, you can still disengage and get help for yourself. This sends several messages. One is that you care. Another is that you are not defeated by life. For a young adult who feels helpless and defeated by the power of drug addiction, your behavior can provide a powerful model. Even if your grown-up “kid” is not talking to you, you remain a special person in his life, and it’s important for him to know he is not destroying you and you believe human beings can change. This can give him hope that there is a change for him, too.

For no clear reason, many adolescents and young people grow out of certain behaviors, including the use of psychoactive drugs. Certain ages bring certain behaviors with really out of the no-saying years, the rebellious adolescent grows out of his perilous risk-taking. If he makes it to the age of thirty, he may also grow out of excessive consumption of alcohol and, perhaps, other drugs. This has been true of many of the young people who used marijuana in the fifties and sixties. Many stopped with very little or no prodding and without professional help. Marriage often makes the difference. A 1997 study by researchers at the University of Michigan showed that marijuana use dropped by more than one-third and cocaine use dropped by one-half after young adults got married.

Dr. David Smith, founder and director of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco, says “We have done interviews with a nonabuse population. A significant number report that marijuana was a phase in their lives and say that the alternative to use is not necessarily treatment, but some other drug-free phase. They have given up drugs on their own and are now committed to good nutrition, the peace movement, and rearing families.” He says also that in general, kids who experiment grow out of it; kids who become addicted do not, and may get worse as they get older.

Since there’s no telling what the long run may hold for your particular child (and the popularity of and easy access to crack and methamphetamine have made addiction much more likely than it was in the sixties), you cannot dismiss your child’s drug use as a phase.