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

by David Sheff

Again I check jails to see if he has been arrested. Again I call hospital emergency rooms. Then Karen’s brother sees him, or thinks he sees him, on Haight Street, huddling on a street corner, shifty, jittery, and suspicious-looking. I am beside myself—uncomprehending, terrified. Nothing in my life has prepared me for the incapacitating worry when I don’t know where he is. I imagine Nic on the streets of San Francisco, like a wild animal, wounded and desperate. Like some off-the-deep-end anesthesiologist presiding over his own brain surgery, Nic trying to manage the flow of drugs in order to achieve a high, which rapidly and necessarily becomes less about euphoria and more about avoiding the hell of withdrawal.

In the drawer of the old desk in his room, I find a scribbled journal entry in a marbled composition notebook that lists a typical day’s menu. 1½ grams speed an eighth ounce of mushrooms 2 klonopin 3 codeine 2 valium 2 hits of e Back in my office, I try to write, but I’m catatonic.

“Poor Nic,” I say. “He wouldn’t do this if he was in his right mind.” “Poor Nic?” She angrily turns to leave the room. I call after her, “But this is not Nic.” She looks at me and shakes her head. She doesn’t want to hear it. I can’t make excuses for him much longer.

I spend several more nights in anguish and dread. Then, one night, the kids asleep, Karen having read to them from the Arabian Nights, she has the newspaper in bed and I am writing in my office when I hear something. The front door? With a racing heart, I go to investigate and collide with Nic in the hallway. He grunts hardly a “hey,” then rushes past me, aiming for his bedroom, though he stops briefly when I demand, “Nic? Where have you been?” He acts put upon, snarling, “What’s your problem?” “I asked you a question. Where have you been?”

I ask him to sit down and talk. “If it’s about rehab, there’s nothing to say.” “Nic—” “Nothing to say.” “You have to try again. Nic. Look at me.” He doesn’t. “You’re throwing everything away.” “It’s mine to throw away.” “Don’t throw it away.” “There’s nothing to throw away.” “Nic!” He pushes past me and without looking up says, “I’m sorry.” He rushes down the hall. When he passes Karen, he says, “Hey, Mama,” and she stares at him, uncomprehending.

Though I want to hold on to him, and though I dread the haunting vacancy and debilitating worry when he’s gone, I don’t do a thing.

I am awake at four A.M., along with other parents of drug-addicted children, children who are—we don’t know where. It is another interminable big-moon night. Suddenly I think, It’s Nic’s birthday. Today my son turns twenty. I fight off stabbing urges to second-guess myself. There must have been something I could have tried. I should never have let him leave. I should try to find him.

“Nic stole hypodermic needles from my mom’s house when we visited here last month,” she tells me. “Needles?” “They were for her cancer medication. He also stole morphine.” She sobs. “I don’t know what to say.” “I don’t either.” After a pause, she says: “I can tell you one thing. Don’t help him. Don’t give him any money. He’ll try everything to get you to help him. Then his mom. If you help him, it will only kill him faster. It’s one of the few lessons we learned from my sister’s addiction.” “I had no idea. I’m an idiot. I thought he was doing better. I thought he got through the year at school sober.” “You wanted to believe him just like me.”

Even after everything we have been through, I am stunned. Nic is injecting drugs—shooting them into his arms, arms that not that long ago threw baseballs and built Lego castles, arms that wrapped around my neck when I carried his sleepy body in from the car at night.

There is no point in sitting at home waiting for the telephone that doesn’t ring. We strive to carry on with our lives.

My children—all three of them—seem as comfortable in the ocean as on land. They are like dolphins.

I feel like the cormorant. A shark has appeared from the depths. I stare at it and helplessly see the approach—and with it the precariousness of Nic’s life—see how close he is to dying. As physically sick as the image makes me, I cannot fend it off.

Watching them, I relax for a moment, but anxiety has taken up permanent residence in my body. We are driving home. We do not talk about Nic. It’s not that we’re not thinking about him. His addiction and its twin, the specter of his death, permeate the air we breathe. Karen and I try to gird ourselves in case the next telephone call brings with it the worst possible news. Nic is still gone. Life does not stop.

I’m in an aisle vaguely scanning a wall of dried pasta when the Muzak system plays Eric Clapton’s song about the death of his son. “Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?” It’s more than I can tolerate. I break down in the middle of the market. Jasper and Daisy, their arms loaded with the items on their lists, both race around the corner at the same time and catch my tears. They are appalled and afraid.

Here’s a note to the parents of addicted children: Choose your music carefully. Avoid Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” from the Polaroid or Kodak or whichever commercial, and the songs “Turn Around” and “Sunrise, Sunset” and—there are thousands more. Avoid Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” and this one, Eric Clapton’s song about his son. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” sneaked up on me one time. The music doesn’t have to be sentimental. Springsteen can be dangerous. John and Yoko. Björk. Dylan. I become overwhelmed when I hear Nirvana. I want to scream like Kurt Cobain. I want to scream at him. Music isn’t all that does it.

There are millions of treacherous moments. Driving along Highway 1, I will see a peeling wave. Or I reach the fork where two roads meet near Rancho Nicasio, where we veered to the left in carpool. A shooting star on a still night at the crest of Olema Hill. With friends, I hear a good joke—one that Nic would appreciate. The kids do something funny or endearing. A...

I have been defeated by meth and have given up. Bailing him out, paying his debts, dragging him to shrinks, counselors, and scraping him off the street—it has been futile; meth is impervious. I have always assumed that vigilance and love would guarantee a decent life for my children, but I have learned that they aren’t enough. He declines my offer.

Nic’s writing teacher at Hampshire, the one who accepted Nic into his class after they shook hands, hears that he relapsed and writes to me: “Sober Nic sparkles. I’ve buried too many people over the years not to be sick about this news.”

Why do I want to meet him? No matter how unrealistic, I retain a sliver of hope that I can get through to him. That’s not quite accurate. I know I can’t, but at least I can put my fingertips on his cheek.

For our meeting, Nic chooses Steps of Rome, a café on Columbus Avenue, in North Beach, the neighborhood where I raised him. Nic played in Washington Square opposite Saints Peter and Paul Church. We would browse City Lights, the bookstore, and walk backward down the nearly vertical streets to the wharf, where we sat on the curb and watched the Human Jukebox play his trumpet and then ate banana splits at the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory. Across Broadway in Chinatown, we picked up bok choy and melons, and on our way home stopped at Caffe Trieste for coffee and hot chocolate. Sometimes we ate an early dinner at a sushi bar, where Nic ordered customized tempura with only orange vegetables (carrots and yams). Or we went to Vanessi’s, the Italian restaurant where the waiters, in burgundy coats and creased black pants, lifted Nic and set him, tow-headed and a gap between his front teeth, on a stool at the counter stacked with telephone books. Nic’s eyes would grow round while watching the pyrotechnics of the line cooks splashing brandy into saucepans. The liquor ignited, and Nic was thrilled. The cooks had his order memorized: kid-sized caesar salad, ravioli triangolo, and zabaglione whisked in a banged-up copper bowl.

When he got sleepy, I carried him home, his tiny arms wrapped around my neck.

Since reason and love, the forces I had come to rely on in my life, have betrayed me, I am in unknown terrain.

I order coffee while racking my brain for the one thing I haven’t thought of that might reach him. I wait until it is more than a half-hour past our meeting time, recognizing the suffocating worry, and also the bitterness and rage. After forty-five minutes, I decide that he isn’t coming—what had I expected?—and leave.

Another half-hour later, I am ready to go home, really, maybe, when I see him. Walking toward me, but looking down, his gangly arms limp at his sides, he looks more than ever like a ghostly Egon Schiele self-portrait, debauched and wasted. He sees me and stops, then cautiously approaches. We tentatively hug, my arms wrapping around his vaporous spine, and I kiss his cheek. He’s chalk-white. We embrace like that, and then sit down at a table by the window. He can’t look me in the eyes.

“Nic, are you ready to stop? To return to the living?” “Don’t start.” “Jasper and Daisy miss you. They don’t—” He cuts me off. “I can’t deal with that. Don’t guilt-trip me.”

After we say goodbye, I watch him rise and leave. He’s shaking and holding on to his stomach. Through Nic’s drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything. Every time we reach a point where we feel we can’t bear any more, we do. I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate. He’s just experimenting. Going through a stage. It’s only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he’s not using hard drugs. At least it’s not heroin. He would never resort to needles. At least he’s alive. I have also learned (the hard way because, as it turns out, there’s no other way to learn such lessons) that parents are more flexible with our hopes and dreams for our children than we ever imagined. When Nic was growing up, I thought I would be content with whatever choices he made in his life. But the truth was that I fully expected he would go to college. Of course he would. It was never questioned. I pictured him in a satisfying job, with a loving relationship, and eventually with children of his own. However, with his escalating drug use I have revised my hopes and expectations. When college seemed unlikely, I learned to live with the idea that he would skip college and go right to work.

But that began to seem unrealistic, and so I concluded that I would be content if he found a sense of peace. Now I live with the knowledge that, never mind the most modest definition of a normal or healthy life, my son may not make it to twenty-one. Summer ends. Every time the telephone rings, my stomach constricts.

“I never again could get the click”—addicts are agitated and confused, and most stop eating and sleeping. Parents of addicts don’t sleep, either.

By now pretty much everyone we know in town has heard about Nic, so people ask about him with no small amount of nervousness. Laurel, a mother who is also going through this—her daughter, a heroin addict, was in a near-fatal car crash—hugs me and starts crying.

My cell phone rings, and I know that Nic is calling.

I answer the phone, but no one is there. I check for messages. There’s one—from Nic. His voice is cocky, slurred. “OK, OK . . . sorry. Jesus, this is really hard. Sorry. I’m stopping. But part of crashing out, or whatever, and trying to get focused for work . . . I’ve had to sleep a lot ’cause my body ain’t that happy with me. I slept through Friday . . . waking up on Saturday, not realizing I’d missed a whole day. So in regards to the rest, I don’t know. I’m confused.” Then nothing.

He notices something and stops short. “What?” He looks at the phone in my hand with worried eyes and asks, “Is it Nic?”

This is not an option. I have that education already . . . aa and a higher power don’t work for me. They leave me just as horribly empty as ever—” It cuts off, ends there. Another email to Vicki. “I’m pretty screwed up physically and mentally, so forgive me if I’m less than perfectly eloquent,” he writes. “I’m going to call you once it’s late enough, but I wanted to get a few things down on paper just to lay it all out.”

Giving cash to a using addict is like handing a loaded gun to someone on the verge of suicide.

“I’m so sick of all this.” “What am I supposed to do?” “I’m just sick of it.” She walks out of the room.

When he, an ashen skeleton, twitchy and rambling, wobbles unsteadily into their room, they are horrified both by his debilitated condition and the track marks on his arms. They beg him to come to New York, where he can stay with them and detox. Maybe his romance with the San Francisco streets has passed, maybe he is tired and frightened, or maybe it’s just that relocating to New York City intrigues him.

His dealer gives him a going-away present, an obscene pile of meth, and Nic snorts it before boarding a cross-country flight.

In New York, our friends convince Nic to see a psychiatrist who specializes in addiction. The doctor prescribes sleeping pills and Nic sleeps for most of a week. He endures the physical withdrawal accompanied by the mental anguish—“remorse, shame, disbe...

Other than telling him that I love him and that I am sorry it is so difficult, I am...

Nic tells me that he can never again use crystal, he knows that, but, according to him, his doctor says that it’s fine that he smokes pot or has a glass of wine; they help him “keep even.” So once again I brace myself. I have reason to worry. A UCLA study has shown that an addict is twelve times more likely to relapse on meth if he smokes pot or drinks alcohol.

I’m unprepared for the phone call at five on a Sunday morning. I leap up and my heart pounds. Karen lifts her head and looks at me. “What is it?” I grab the phone and weakly say hello.

He says that a doctor just called from Brooklyn. Nic is in a hospital emergency room after an overdose. “He is in critical condition and on life support.” I have been waiting for this telephone call, and yet it is no easier for having previewed it so often. I hang up and tell Karen. “Will he be all right?” “I don’t know.” I begin praying, pleading with a god I have never believed in. “God, don’t let him die. Please don’t let him die.”

The doctor tells me that if the EMT team hadn’t responded right away, Nic would have been dead already. Now there is a chance.

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. I make arrangements to fly to New York and throw some things in a suitcase.

“He’s a very, very lucky boy,” the doctor says. “He’ll have another chance.” My son will have another chance. For the first time since the early morning phone call, I breathe.

Our child has nearly died. Jasper and Daisy again ask if Nic is going to be all right. I call the hospital in an hour’s time, and I’m put through to a telephone next to Nic’s bed. He is hardly coherent enough to talk, but he sounds desperate. He asks to go into another program, says it is his only chance. I tell him that I’m on my way to New York.

I know that if this overdose isn’t enough to stop him, nothing will. Shaking, I return home.

At night I lie in bed, smell the star jasmine through the open window, stare into the dark. “Are you awake, Karen?” “Are you?” she asks. There is no sleeping for either of us.

Another known terror plays out in my brain. Nic, overwhelmed by the newest events and feeling physically as well as psychically defeated, has gone to kill himself. No answer on his telephone, nothing.

Except for throwing off the boots he had snatched from the closet in his hospital room, he has not troubled to undress. He still has the remnants of tape on his arms that had held the IVs in place. He had reached his apartment and made his way inside and fallen facedown on the mattress, as though diving headlong into a burial plot. He asks if I’m coming. Will I come?