i try to focus on others and starting with stray birds i may wend my spirit round to people. we are all in deep distress now. but yes i worry about mom, and about my sister and my brother and my nephew and trudy and the ones in the countries we occupy and destroy and most of all i worry about me because that's how i survived this long.
at first i said how i went bad with pot and eventually sniffing gas and nearly drinking from the spout and probably killed a constellation of young eager brain cells. as we were talking about intervention, which was discussed about me even when i was 50, i thought some harrowing tale would be instructive for my nephew, but he's him and i'm me, and the only thing that serves is what resonates in our unique instincts. 
i started going bad by argonne labs when i made a fort in the woods where the white deer lived. i ditched 31 days of school and was removed to a new school where i got busted for smoking weed on the way to my first class. mostly i lay in bed in an aromatic cloud listening to aerosmith and queen. then the car crash, and then the hospital security guard became the stepdad would be rescuer. but he was just a cop, and that was what i was rebelling against all along, the petty control of a whacked system. i may have been self-destructive, but i was not dumb, if i couldn't find freedom, they wouldn't get me. of course, they did. but only superficially.
i almost killed myself but i kept myself alive, the system did not get me nor death. some inner resource was located in the midst of my horrific struggles, some self mythic feat. some instinct learned between rebellion and animal love.
i learned i had to go into my body to liberate my mind, i had to feed my dragon to face the dragon outside. 
what can i say to jasper that won't sound like some old addled blowhard projecting backwards? i have no wisdom only experience, and only my experience. all i can say is make yours your own, and i love you even though i may see absent, reminding me of the absence i grew up in. we're all in distress. it's a system of distress. we're all under occupation by an alien culture, and we have to fight to discover what is native to us. we have to resist domination and control. we have to make our spirit strong and survive. 
oh and don't feel you are a failure in adapting to this paradigm america, it is the system that is failing. you can't adapt to an insane and nihilistic system without becoming insane and nihilistic. we must make ourselves uniquely strong, and we must by our very nature, survive.