Customer Reviews
A gutsy book 
2008-05-13
It's hard to write an honest book when the book will reveal that you, its central character, are a helpless onlooker to the terrible waste of a beautiful person, your beautiful boy, your eldest son. David Sheff has written that book.
David's son Nic was, is, special. He began winning writing prizes at an early age. He had a clear, tender visage and a brilliant mind. He was obviously destined for worldly success. All that promise died when, at age 11, he started using pot, then booze, then LSD.
Then he graduated. To meth.
Methamphetamine isn't a trendy drug. It isn't imported. It isn't a party favorite. It's manufactured in filthy garages by deranged addicts-turned-dealers, a trip of last resort for people who simply must go the downward route. It turns its users into raging animals, then passive wraiths, enhancing their sexual peaks and darkening their lowest fevered valleys. Nic, the sweet, smart, beautiful boy, became evasive, dishonest, a thief, a prostitute, a street person --- he sank and sank.
David grew up in a generation that embraced the use of drugs --- pot smoking, in the Berkeley hills where he raised Nic and his two half-siblings, was completely acceptable. Not using drugs would have been abnormal. So the good, liberal dad anticipated that Nic might have contact with drugs and might need some guidance. He saw his son turn into a skeletal stranger, but he chose to believe it was just a little pot, just a little alcohol, just something that could be dealt with easily by counseling or, at the most, a period of a few weeks in standard rehab.
For both father and son, it took years --- agonizing, tragic, lost years --- to understand that Nic was not going to emerge one day as a normal guy, finish college and settle down. Nic was unmoored. David learned that addiction begins with a predilection lurking way back in the genetic code. But what happens next are acts of will. The addict knows that he or she must break the addictive cycle, go into rehab and stay with the program. But over and over again, addicts like Nic refuse and reject that avenue of salvation. They are in a dance with evil, and often, for reasons no one else can understand, they want to die.
David and his wife despaired when Nic would sneak in and steal their belongings or write bad checks on their accounts. They were exhausted by trying to care and yet be tough, forced to use every encounter with Nic as a confrontation to convince him to do something he didn't want to do. David lived through all the guilt trips --- it was his fault for divorcing when Nic was young, for not figuring things out soon enough, for not doing something that could have saved Nic. But what? Then came anger and resentment at being used, ripped off by his addict son; then Nic would disappear again and David would think with horror, "Nic could die." David knew that Nic needed to have a serious crisis so he could see the need for a change. He'd been told that for the change to take hold "you have to be alone, broke, desolate, desperate." Surely Nic had been all those, but he didn't come up and stay up. Nic's little half-sister Daisy put it wisely: "It's like Nic is like my brother who I know and this other guy who I don't."
David realized one day that he missed Nic and wanted him back, but that the Nic he loved was gone already, and forever. Yet still there were those precious times, such as when Nic would come home occasionally and play with his half-sister and brother, or when David was immobilized after a near-fatal subarachnoidal hemorrhage and Nic was there, sitting by his bed, holding out a lifeline to his ailing father like a flickering promise. Such times keep a parent hoping, even when they find themselves collapsing in tears at an Al-Anon meeting, pouring out their story to a roomful of strangers.
It took guts to write this book, and guts to live through what David Sheff has lived through. He offers the few tips he has picked up along the way, but he doesn't consider himself a font of advice. With Nic still in some stage of recovery at the book's close, David can only say, "I am confident I have done everything I could to help Nic. Now it's up to him...our relationship can evolve into one of independence, acceptance, and compassion, with healthy boundaries. The love is a given."
--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
Couldn't put it down 2008-05-10
One of the best books I have read in the last year and one of the most riveting memoirs I've read in a long, long time.
David Sheff is able to portray the frustration, anger, angst and incredible agony of living with a loved one who is addicted without being self-serving or over dramatic.
Each time his son disappears, your stomach drops and you are almost there with Sheff while his worry and doubt eat away at him. Each time Nic fails, you want to shout at him and each time he gets back up you want to cheer for him.
Sheff's hope and grief come through in every chapter and you are constanly left wondering "what if?"
But while Sheff succeeds mightily in putting you in the room with him, he doesn't wallow nor does he force his readers to wade in self pity.
I've already ordered Tweak and I'm hoping Nic has all of the candor of his dad and even half the story-telling ability.
Every Parent Knows 2008-05-07
In the back of all our minds when our beautiful sons and daughters are born is the realization of all the evil that can be laid upon them by society and by themselves. Those adorable, cute, huggable children face step after step of hazardous life --- made especially hazardous during the teenage years when being "with it" often means being dumb.
This book is where many of us have not gone but know we could have gone. Sheff is a courageous writer.
Disappointing -- valuable only to better understand his son 
2008-05-06
Unfortunately the father/author spends so much time telling us about his idyllic life and self-importance that he fails at a thorough and genuine self-evaluation and revelation. I spent the time while reading the book wondering if he ever really listens (treats young Nic as a little adult and repeats the same by needing to explain Nic's addiction to his four-year old) and why he cannot give his son some space (He attends an AA meeting with his son as a gesture of support. I can only imagine what the AA group was thinking.).
Beautiful Boy - don't just stare at it - buy it! 2008-05-06
After standing in line at Starbuck's for as it seemed, over a month, I decided to purchase this book on Amazon.com. I haven't regretted it. David Sheff offers an inside look at a Father and Son and a horrible addiction. The book made me both happy and sad and at times, and gave me a stomach ache because of the drug's powerful pull. It's such a HOT topic these days. For those of you who have thought about buying this book - do it!
About a child's addiction 
2008-05-05
Amazon Best of the Month, February 2008: From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction.
Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective of his father, David. Achingly honest, it chronicles the betrayal, pain, and terrifying question marks that haunt the loved ones of an addict. Many respond to addiction with a painful oath of silence, but David Sheff opens up personal wounds to reinforce that it is a disease, and must be treated as such. Most importantly, his journey provides those in similar situations with a commodity that they can never lose: hope
--Dave Callanan
Beautiful Boy 2008-05-05
I have been in the drug and alcohol treatment business in the San Francisco area for 30 years. I can testify that the events in this family's life are unfortunately true and more frequent than many people would like to know. I consider this book a major contribution to our field because it is such a well-written journey of the addict and his/her family. I recommend that people read and embrace the truth of this book, no matter how fearsome the content.
Beautiful Book 2008-05-04
This was a high-demand book that I thought would be difficult to find. Not so with the Amazon system. Found a reputable source, good price, good delivery time within minutes. Ordered used, but when it came (quickly by the way) it looked new. Very happy with the whole transaction.
Since it was right at tax time, I have not yet had a chance to read it. But my wife got to it first, so I'll have to wait a little.
Very pleased altogether. Keep up the good work.
R.K.Shields
close to home 2008-05-02
As the parent of a child with a drug addiction, this was a very emotional book. There were times I had to set the book aside. It was an emotional journey and the author took you along for that journey. It should be in every parent's library.
The Answers 2008-04-30
This book is really half of a whole. I read this one, and then Tweak. You could read them the other way 'round, but this way worked for me. This one gave a larger overview of the landscape both books cover. This one is a broader view, more like a birds eye view with a global sense of the action. Tweak is more like a creeping, crawling journey though one set of alleys, hills and valleys.
As I worked my way through the books, I felt extreme spiritual pain. This was the most Terrible and Awesome (in the archaic sense of the words) experience, and yet at the end it gave me profound insight. Nic was seeking a sense of wholeness and a sense of peace. He wanted to be a person who exemplified something he could not quite figure out, and he wanted to stop feeling pain. He used drugs as a short cut to get to this place. And as a result he lost everything. Yet when he did the hard work to find out that he was in fact a whole person all with in himself, and he could reach with in and experience his own peace, the need for drugs slept.
In Beautiful Boy, David discovers the same thing. As long as he waits on Nic - something outside of himself - to give him peace, he never has it. But once he can let go, make the sacrifice of his belief that he must, or can control Nic, he begins to find his own peace.
When you stumble across the answer to a question you never asked, the knowledge may pass you by, or at worst strike you as odd. But when you gain the answer you seek (here finding a sense of a whole person or a sense of bliss and peace) by cheating, or a short cut (in this case drugs), the result can destroy you. You always sacrifice something for knowledge (time, opportunity to do or know something else, etc). But when you choose the sacrifice and go through the struggle for understanding, in the end you gain, learn and grow. If you jump ahead to the end, you no longer get to choose what you are going to give up, the price is higher, and you gain nothing from the glimpse you gain of the answer.
