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Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Average rating: 4/5

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Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

by David Sheff

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | December 10, 2008 | Trade Paperback

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheffs journey through his son Nics addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

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Reviews

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 3/5

    It was sad yet hopeful

    Patricia Pearce

    2 years ago

    Sheff really got inside your head and made you FEEL where he was coming from.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 4/5

    Honest and Human

    Kristy

    3 years ago

    Sheff did a great job on this memoir. His writing is interesting, thoughtful, and well researched. He is writing about his experiences as the father of an addict. The story was sad but relateable because they were a 'normal' family with a 'normal' son who makes some bad choices and gets sucked into the turmole of meth addiction.

    I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has an addict in their life (whether it be meth or alcohol or whatever). Sheff does a great job showing how addiction affects everyone around the addict and can reek havic on a family.

    A very interesting read.

Details

From the Publisher

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheffs journey through his son Nics addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

About the Author

DAVID SHEFFs books include Game Over, China Dawn, and All We Are Saying. His many articles and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Playboy, Wired, Fortune, and elsewhere. His piece for the New York Times Magazine, My Addicted Son, won an award from the American Psychological Association for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addiction. Sheff and his family live in Inverness, California.

Trade Paperback

336 Pages, 5.25 x 8 x 0.88 in

December 10, 2008

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

English


0547203888
9780547203881

From Community

From the Critics

Expanding on his New York Times Magazine article, Sheff chronicles his son''s downward spiral into addiction and the impact on him and his family. A bright, capable teenager, Nic began trying mind- and mood-altering substances when he was 17. In months, use became abuse, then abuse became addiction. By the time Sheff knew of his son''s condition, Nic was strung out on meth, the highly potent stimulant. While his son struggles to get clean, his second wife and two younger children are pulled helplessly into the drama. Sheff, as the parent of an addict, cycles through denial and acceptance and resistance. The author was already a journalist of considerable standing when this painful story began to unfold, and his impulse for detail serves him personally as well as professionally: there are hard, solid facts about meth and the kinds of havoc it wreaks on individuals, families and communities both urban and rural. His journey is long and harrowing, but Sheff does not spare himself or anyone else from keen professional scrutiny any more than he was himself spared the pains-and joys-of watching a loved one struggling with addiction and recovery. Real recovery creates-and can itself be-its own reward; this is an honest, hopeful book, coming at a propitious moment in the meth epidemic. 

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