I love you, but I can’t be around you. I don’t want to see you again, ever.”

Have you said those words to anyone? Have you wanted to? Is it ever a good thing to cut someone you love out of your life? Can it really be done?

There are myriad themes worthy of discussion in Ellen Hopkins’ Crank and Glass, the story of Kristina’s descent into, rehabilitation from, and relapse into crystal meth addiction: addiction itself, the two personalities of Kristina/Bree, the predator/prey relationship of dealer/addict, and the magnitude, scope, and depth of the hurt involved. But the thing that hit me most deeply was the question faced by Kristina’s family: When is it enough? When do the people around the addict say, “The wound is too deep. The only thing left is to try and stop the bleeding, to keep the poison for spreading”? Stopping the bleeding means cutting off the blood supply. And that means a tourniquet.

I think that’s a good metaphor here. To save Kristina, her family chooses to stop enabling her, to cut her off from their love and support. But is it enough to save her life?

It’s not a decision they make lightly. They know it might be what pushes Kristina to her final decline. But that’s the time to make it. When the person is going to die anyway. When he or she is bent on self destruction with you, there is no other course than to try taking yourself away to change his or her destiny.

In Crank, but especially in Glass, help and support are actually toxic to Kristina. For reasons not  …