“It’s scary to have hope because those hopes always get dashed when they do something stupid or relapse or go back to prison or whatever it may be,” Nicole Grigsby said. “With Shayne, it’s always everything.”
For Grigsby, a former paralegal, the reality of a loved one’s addiction is a constant presence weighing on her heart. She worries about his safety and health every day, enduring a cycle of hope followed by disappointment.
Although incurable, addiction is treatable and manageable with proper support. It is a chronic disorder that rewires the brain’s reward system, making it a constant struggle for addicts to fight compulsive urges towards their substance of dependence.
In 2023, 48.5 million people in the United States struggled with addiction, also known as substance use disorder (SUDs). Yet, only 4.5% of people with SUDs received treatment.
Grigsby’s experience reflects the struggles of families across the U.S. — those often overlooked in the addiction narrative, but whose lives are continuously impacted and reshaped by SUDs.
Behind the statistics are families living with the consequences of addiction every day. For Nicole Grigsby, the intersection of illness and care was not a mere hypothetical—it was her reality.
In 1993, as a coordinator of the HIV/AIDS Law Project, Grigsby served as a healthcare power of attorney, preparing the last wills and testaments for people dying of AIDS.
One individual on her caseload named Grigsby the legal guardian of her son.
At the age of 29, Grigsby began to establish boundaries with a child who had never been parented.
“I started setting strict boundaries and learning that I couldn’t give in even one time,” she said. “He didn’t understand the consequences of his actions because he had never heard the word no.”
Schaeffer came from a family riddled with addiction and mental health issues: his four biological aunts and two biological uncles were addicts who had all been in and out of prison. His mother, a prostitute, struggled with drug abuse and primarily associated herself with other addicts.
He had been removed from his home numerous times by Child Protective Services and never experienced a stable or safe home environment.
For nine years, Grigsby did her best to provide a safe and loving home. “He comes from a horrible situation genetically, as far as addiction and mental health issues,” she said. “So obviously those are things, pieces of him biologically, that I can’t change, and it’s a horrible thing for the family to deal with because it’s never-ending.”
She received parenting support from an adoption counselor specializing in older-child placements and coordinated with his team at the Phoenix Children’s Hospital to manage his HIV.
As Schaeffer entered adolescence, he began using drugs and alcohol to self-medicate and “calm whatever pain was in his head.”
Treatments to SUDs include medications, support groups and behavioral therapies (12-step programs, family therapy, motivational enhancement therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy)., and support groups. Yet in 2023, only 4.5% of people struggling with addiction received treatment.
By age 14, Grigsby made the difficult decision to place him with another family because his aggressive behavior had escalated to the point where she feared for her own safety.
“He was strong and combative, scary, and he threatened to stab me,” she said. “He was bigger than me, and I had nobody in the house that could help me if, God forbid, something went wrong, and he did something to me.”
Grigsby had no contact with him until he turned 18. Shortly after that, he went to prison for the first time, beginning an 11-year cycle of incarceration.
“It makes me feel so sad for him, [and] it makes me feel sad for myself too,” she said. “It makes me feel like a failure as a parent.”
The instability of Schaeffer’s life—periods of incarceration, relapses, and erratic behavior—has not only shaped his future. It has also begun to reach his 7-year-old son, Jax, who is already experiencing the same cycle of addiction and chaos that once defined Schaeffer’s early childhood.
Now, 30-year-old Schaeffer is out of prison but continues to struggle with mental health challenges and addiction.
Grigsby said he takes his behavioral medications sporadically, often stopping them completely and returning to meth, crack, marijuana, and alcohol—his “street meds,” as she called them.
“It’s usually a pattern of behavior that I see with him—he’s very manic and goes up and down, and that’s when I usually see behaviors that are drug-related,” she said. “Major manipulation, pathological lies about where he’s been, what he’s doing, and it’s impossible to trust what’s coming out of his mouth because he would lie and do anything to get money to use drugs.”
Dr. Amanda Burkhardt, an assistant professor of clinical pharmacy at the USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, said there is a “well-established connection between substance use and psychiatric disorders.”
Together, these treatment gaps reflect a wider national crisis — one in which mental illness and addiction are deeply intertwined.
“When he calls you, you never know what Shayne you’re gonna get—is he gonna be suicidal, crazy, screaming, the drugged out Shayne, or is he gonna be somewhat stabilized and nice and normal?” she said.
As hard as she said it is, Grigsby does her best to maintain a connection with Schaeffer, calling twice a week.
“Just the unknowing and the erratic behavior of him makes you not wanna talk to him because you don’t know what you’re gonna get… there’s no stability in his life,” she said.
Even when Schaeffer tried to change, the system often worked against him. Grigsby witnessed firsthand how the system handles—and fails—people with SUDs and mental illnesses. Some prisons, like Kingman, offered treatment programs that helped Schaeffer. Others, like the prison in Florence, AZ, denied him access, effectively erasing all the progress he had made.
“All of [Schaeffer’s] little friends sitting in prison and doing nothing, they’re just gonna get back out on the streets eventually and have the same drug problem, and then they’re gonna go back in,” she said. “hey don’t know any other way, and they’ve never gotten legitimate, real help to solve the problem of why they’re doing drugs.”
The consequences of Schaeffer’s life are already visible in Jax. Although Jax has had a legal guardian since he was a year old, Grigsby still worries about the lasting impact of exposure to addiction and mental illness, having absent parents and elderly guardians, and inheriting a genetic predisposition.
“[Schaeffer’s] been uninvited to his own son’s birthday party because we can’t trust his behavior,” Grigsby said. “Think about what that’s doing to Jax—he is living basically the same life that Shayne had.”
Now, Grigsby does what she can — buying him groceries and hygiene products and calling weekly — but acknowledges the limits of her role.
“You can’t do it for them,” she said. “They have to want to do it for themselves, and if they don’t want to do it for themselves, it’ll never happen.”
Grisgby emphasizes that substance use and mental health are deeply intertwined. “The mental component is huge with addiction—I feel like they’re partners,” she said.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of help in the U.S. for mental health or addiction, and I feel like we’ve dropped the ball with both problems.”
Grigsby’s story highlights how addiction echoes throughout families. The emotional toll, the lack of stability, and the ongoing worry for future generations illustrate how the impact of SUDs extends far beyond the substance-abusing individual.
Her experiences raising Schaeffer, she said, point towards a system designed for failure rather than recovery. Access to treatment is limited, costs are high, stigma runs rampant, and the institutions that are accessible provide short-term intervention without the long-term support necessary to sustain progress.
“I feel like it’ll never get better, so there’s a sense of hopelessness that it’ll never change,” Nicole Grigsby said. “And just when you think he might change and he might get a little bit better, and he might do the right thing, everything always comes crashing down.”
In a society that shames addiction and neglects people battling addiction, she hopes for a change.
“There are people like this out there that need help,” Grigsby said. “A lot of them have mental illness that’s untreated, that turns into addiction, and we need to treat the problem, which isn’t always substance abuse first—it’s mental health issues.”
Addiction doesn’t exist in isolation. It takes root in families, shapes childhoods, strains relationships and perpetuates cycles of mental illness and substance abuse.
While statistics highlight the numbers, the lived experiences of families, such as Grigsby’s, reveal the human toll — the heartbreak, the uncertainty, and the enduring hope that change is possible.