Beautiful Boy: A Heartbreaking Memoir of a Father's Struggle with His Son's Addiction and the Journey to Recovery

by David Sheff

It’s not only that misery loves company, because (I learned) misery is too self-absorbed to want much company.

This is the way that misery does love company: People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague—an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families.

Along with this, I learned another lesson, a soul-shaking one: our children live or die with or without us. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It is a devastating realization, but also liberating. I finally chose life for myself. I chose the perilous but essential path that allows me to accept that Nic will decide for himself how—and whether—he will live his life.

When change takes place gradually, it’s difficult to comprehend its meaning.

Please please please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Parents can only be as happy as their unhappiest child, according to an old saw. I’m afraid it’s true.

I have learned to live with tormenting contradictions, such as the knowledge that an addict may not be responsible for his condition and yet he is the only one responsible. I also have accepted that I have a problem for which there is no cure and there may be no resolution. I know that I must draw a line in the sand—what I will take, what I will do, what I can’t take, what I can no longer do—and yet I must also be flexible enough to erase it and draw a new line. And now, with Nic in the hospital, I learn that I love him more, and more compassionately, than ever.

Love cannot exist for long without the dimension of justice.”

I cannot take this any longer. And yet every time I think I can’t take any more, I do.

“Do you think that Nic looks like Bob Dylan?”

Your reward for your hard work in recovery is that you come headlong into the pain that you were trying to get away from with drugs.

When I drive him to the airport after his visit in the mountains, he tells me that he loves his life. He uses those words. “I love my life.”

I recall the many occasions when he was gone, on the streets, God knows where, when I fantasized that I could scrape him out of my brain, if only I could get a lobotomy, the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind, and I would no longer agonize about him, and agonize for him. I am grateful now to have it all—even the worry and the pain. I no longer want a lobotomy, no longer want him erased. I will take the worry in order to take what has come through as the most important emotion after my hemorrhage. Some people may opt out. Their child turns out to be whatever it is that they find impossible to face—for some, the wrong religion; for some, the wrong sexuality; for some, a drug addict. They close the door. Click. Like in mafia movies: “I have no son. He is dead to me.” I have a son and he will never be dead to me.

I am accustomed to the way that joy can be fleeting and I can sometimes fall into a dark pit. However, living with this over time, I am now being allowed—allowing myself?—to crawl up out of the pit and lift the veil that covers it and to witness, with visual and aural and tactile acuity, a slightly altered world, slightly brighter, richer, and vivider.

The miracles do not cancel out evil, but I accept evil in order to participate in the miraculous. Nic, do you have a sense of your higher power now?

It is still so easy to forget that addiction is not curable. It is a lifelong disease that can go into remission, that is manageable if the one who is stricken does the hard, hard work, but it is incurable.

Fortunately I have a son, my beautiful boy. Unfortunately he is a drug addict. Fortunately he is in recovery. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is in recovery again. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is in recovery again. Unfortunately he relapses. Fortunately he is not dead.

I rage against his struggle and pain and how his addiction has caused so much pain in our lives—ours, his—and I am also filled with boundless love for him, the miracle of Nic and all he has and all he has brought to our lives.

I see him as he is—frail, opaque, ill—my beloved son, my beautiful boy. “Everything,” I say to him. “Everything.” Fortunately there is a beautiful boy. Unfortunately he has a terrible disease. Fortunately there is love and joy. Unfortunately there is pain and misery. Fortunately the story is not over. The jet pulls away from the gate. I hang up the phone.

I think, How innocent we are of our mistakes and how responsible we are for them.

Parents of addicts learn to temper our hope even as we never completely lose hope. However, we are terrified of optimism, fearful that it will be punished. It is safer to shut down. But I am open again, and as a consequence I feel the pain and joy of the past and worry about and hope for the future. I know what it is I feel. Everything.

Do not keep secrets. As they often repeat in AA, you’re as sick as your secrets. Though it is not a solution, openness is a relief.

call Nic to say hi. We talk awhile. He sounds—he sounds like Nic, my son, back. What’s next? We’ll see. Before hanging up, he says, “Give Karen, Jas, and Daisy my love.” Then he says he has to go.