Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
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 Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s 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.
The Barnes & Noble Review
"Private faces in public places / are wiser and nicer than public faces in private places," W.
H. Auden famously noted. We live in a public age, alas, in which our "portal" to a fellow creature's suffering is as accessible as a YouTube keystroke. And yet the exchange between public and private remains uneasy despite that accessibility, as David Sheff's book poignantly makes clear.
Author : Sheff, David
Publisher : Mariner Books
Published Year : 2009-01-06T00:00:01Z
Edition : First
Format : Paperback, 352 pages
Language : en_US
Dimensions : Height: 8 Inches, Length: 5.3125 Inches, Weight: 0.6 Pounds, Width: 0.833 Inches
ISBN : 0547203888
ISBN13 : 9780547203881
Overview :
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 Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s 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.
For further information regarding Nic Sheff and his father David, check out Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff.