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 that we need a reminder, but the absurd morning tells us how out of control our lives have become. It was foolish to try to chase him, but we have succumbed to the irrationality that festers along with addiction.

In the afternoon, Nic calls. He tells me everything—he has relapsed, is using meth and heroin. I have rehearsed my response. I shakily tell him that there’s nothing I can do. It’s up to him. I say that the police are searching for him, that his mother reported him missing to the Santa Monica police, and that the Marin sheriffs are patrolling our home and the home of our friends where he broke in. I say, “Do you want to wind up in jail? That’s where you’re headed.” “God,” Nic says. “Please help me. What do I do?” “All I know to tell you to do is what you already know. What do they tell you in the program? Call your sponsor. Call Randy. I don’t know what else to say.”

He is crying. I say nothing. This isn’t how I want to respond. I want to drive to the city to get him. But I repeat, “Call Randy.” I tell him that I love him and hope that he gets his life together. I may sound resolved or resigned, but I’m neither of those things.

I hang up. My temples pound. I want to call back. I want to tell him I’...

“I did what Randy told me to do,” he says. “I prayed. I just kept saying, ‘Please help me.’ I kept repeating it. When I was getting ready to go, April saw me and freaked out. She grabbed on to my leg and was crying and screaming that I couldn’t leave. But if I stayed, we’d both die. I told her, but it didn’t help.” He cries. “I fucked up bad.”

I still act as if I’m OK around Daisy and Jasper, but I break down with Karen.

I am shaking, unable to restrain myself, and when it’s my turn, I blurt out a reconstruction of the past couple weeks. As I’m speaking in a rush of tears and panic, I think, Someone else is talking. This is not my life. Finally, drained, I say, “I don’t know how all you people in this room survive this.” And I cry. So do many of the others.

After the meeting, as I help fold and stack the metal chairs, a woman whom I have never met comes up to me and hugs me, and I horrify myself by weeping in her arms. “Keep coming back,” she says.

Sometimes it startles me that life goes on, but it ...

They careen by us and dive into Nic’s vacant bedroom, designated base in spite of the bad memories that seem permanently soaked into the walls.

Daisy doesn’t respond directly, but asks, “Do you know why that guy does drugs?” Jasper says, “He thinks it makes him feel better.” “They don’t. They make him feel all sad and bad.” Jasper responds, “I don’t think he wants to do them, but he can’t help it. It’s like in cartoons when some character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil whispers into Nicky’s ear and sometimes it gets too loud so he has to listen to him. The angel is there, too,” Jasper continues, “but he talks softer and Nic can’t hear him.”

In the evening Nic reports that Randy almost had to drag him out of bed and onto a bicycle. “I felt like I wanted to die,” he says, “but Randy didn’t take no for an answer. He said he would pick me up, so I got ready. Randy was there and I got on my bike and felt like shit, didn’t think I could pedal down the block, never mind up the coast, but then I felt the wind, and the memory in my body took over and we rode for a while.” There is some life back in Nic’s voice, and I am left with a hopeful image: Nic on his bike in the Southern California sunshine, riding along the beach.

On the weekend, when Nic calls again, he is eager to talk. He expresses astonishment that he relapsed. “I was sober for eighteen months,” he says. “I got cocky. It’s this trick of addiction. You think, My life isn’t unmanageable, I’m doing fine. You lose your humbleness. You think you’re smart enough to handle it.” He admits that he is ashamed—mortified—about this relapse and claims that he is redoubling his efforts. “I’ve been going to two meetings a day,” he says. “I have to start the steps all over.” Of course I am relieved (once again) and hopeful (once ag...

My well-being has become dependent on Nic’s. When he is using, I’m in turmoil; when he’s not, I’m OK, but the relief is tenuous. The therapist says that parents of kids on drugs often get a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome made worse by the recurring nature of addiction.

For parents of an addict, a new barrage can come at any moment. We try to guard against it. We pretend that everything is all right. But we live with a time bomb. It is debilitating to be dependent on another’s moods and decisions and actions. I bristle when I hear the word codependent, because it’s such a cliché of self-help books, but I have become codependent with Nic—codependent on his well-being for mine. How can a parent not be codependent on a child’s health or lack of it? But there must be an alternative, because this is no way to live. I have come to learn that my worry about Nic doesn’t help him, and it harms Jasper, Daisy, Karen—and me.

By now I have learned enough to know that at some point, addicts, especially meth addicts, don’t recover—at least for a long, long time. Some never recover. The physical, never mind the mental, debilitation can be permanent. But Nic’s eyes are light-filled brown, and his body seems strong again. He’s young enough to bounce back, or at least it looks as if he has. His laugh seems easy and honest. But I have observed this transformation before.

“I want to apologize,” he says, but his voice catches and he is silent. For the moment it seems to be impossible for him. Maybe there is too much to apologize for.

While drinking tepid coffee from paper cups, we introduce ourselves. “I’m Nic, a drug addict and alcoholic,” he says. When it’s my turn, I say, “I’m David, father of an addict and alcoholic, here to support my son.”

He says, “It dawned on me. I have gotten my morals back.” Nic and I look at each other with . . . what? Tentativeness. And for the first time in a long time, tenderness.

I am continuously reminded that nothing is easy for Nic. My heart goes out to him. I want to do something to help, but there’s nothing to be done. I want him to acknowledge the traumatic past and promise that it will never happen again. He can’t. When we talk, in fact, I realize that Nic has discovered the bitterest irony of early sobriety. 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.

“Sometimes I don’t think I can make it,” he says. He feels overwhelmed by this relapse. “How could I have fucked up so badly?” he asks. “I can’t believe I did it. I almost lost everythi...

Nic admits that sometimes he fantasizes about relapsing. He dreams about it. Again. Always. His dreams are vivid and ghastly. He feels at once the abhorrence and the seduction of drugs. He can taste them. He tastes crystal, smells it, feels the needle pierce his skin, feels the drug coming on, and the drea...

I know that being sober is more difficult for Nic than I can comprehend. I feel sympathy and pride for his hard work. When I get angry about the past—the lies, the break-ins, the betrayals—I restrain myself...

Nico—her voice pained—sings Jackson Browne’s “These Days.” I hear her sing the haunting lyric: “Don’t confront me with my failures. I have not forgotten them.” I have to remind myself that if Nic’s relapses horrify me, it’s worse for him. I suffer, Vicki suffers, Karen suffers, Jasper and Daisy suffer, my parents suffer, Karen’s suffer, others who love Nic suffer, but he suffers more. “Don’t confront me with my failures. I have not forgotten them.”

They rode for hours and talked about the program, AA, the twelve steps, and how difficult it is to open up to the world, but how much there is to gain when you do. Sobriety is only the beginning, and is the only beginning.

We keep trying to explain it to Jasper and Daisy. “He has a disease” doesn’t begin to comfort them. It’s a wholly unsatisfying, confusing explanation. From their perspective, the symptoms of a disease are things like coughing, fevers, or a sore throat. The closest they get to understanding is Jasper’s image of the devil and the angel, competing for Nic’s soul. Regardless, Daisy and Jasper miss him. Karen and I are unwilling to let Nic visit us in Inverness. We need more time. Nic seems to understand. We are not ready to have him come home again—not after this last time. Not after the stolen checks, the car chase, the traumatic break-ins at our and our friends’ homes, the thefts, the trauma of not knowing—imagining him in the trunk of a car driving east across the country, Sacramento, Reno, Billings, Montana.

“Daisy, you have a stuffy little nose, missypants,” Nic gushes when he sees her, picking Daisy up in a bear hug and spinning in a circle. “It’s so good to see you, little boinky. “And you, mister,” he says, squatting down to meet Jasper’s full eyes. “I have missed you more than the sun misses the moon at night.” He squeezes him too.

We drive along and gaze out on red-earth vistas. In a moment, Jasper quietly asks: “Nic, are you going to use drugs anymore?” “No way,” Nic says. “I know you worry, but I’ll be all right.” They are quiet. We stare at the red clay and spy the first glimpse of the breaking surf.

It is striking to me how our dual realities once again blur. It’s probably a vestigial survival mechanism. Now, instead of recalling the overwhelming calamity and evil, I am swept up in the loveliness of the children here together and the natural beauty. I feel as if we are all being washed clean by the ocean and warm tropical breeze. Feeling hopeful about Nic’s future, I can tuck the darkness of his addiction away—not to forget it, but I set it aside—and meanwhile appreciate the sublimity. A sunset, the clear green water, poetry in the music that plays on CDs in the car—Lennon singing “Julia,” Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks.” For the moment, evil is at bay.

From their tent with three single beds, we also can hear Nic reading to Jasper and Daisy. He has picked up The Witches where he left off more than two years ago.

and a letter for Jasper—from Nic. Jasper opens the envelope carefully. He unfolds the letter and holds it in his hands, reading aloud. In his neat script on paper torn out of a notebook, Nic writes, “I’m looking for a way to say I’m sorry more than with just the meaninglessness of those two words. I also know that this money can never replace all that I stole from you in terms of the fear and worry and craziness that I brought to your young life. The truth is, I don’t know how to say I’m sorry. I love you, but that has never changed. I care about you, but I always have. I’m proud of you, but none of that makes it any better. I guess what I can offer you is this: As you’re growing up, whenever you need me—to talk or just whatever—I’ll be able to be there for you now. That is something that I could never promise you before. I will be here for you. I will live, and build a life, and be someone that you can depend on. I hope that means more than this stupid note and these eight dollar bills.”

We’ll start with your most recent memories and go backwards—There is an emotional core to each of our memories—As we eradicate this core, it starts its degradation process—By the time you wake up in the morning, all memories we have targeted will have withered and disappeared. Like a dream upon waking.

MY ARTICLE “My Addicted Son” appears in the New York Times Magazine in February. Nic and I both hear from friends and strangers, sharing the feedback. Both of us are encouraged, because it seems as if our family’s story has touched many people—and, according to some, helped them, especially those who have been through some version of this, or who are going through it now.

When Nic is asked to write his memoir, he enthusiastically goes forward. And the reaction inspires me to want to write more about it—to go deeper. Soon I have a book deadline, though I would continue writing without one. Writing is enormously painful, and writing this story is sometimes excruciating. Writing every day, I go through the emotions I felt at the time of the story I’m remembering. I relive the hell. But I also relive the moments of hope and miracle and love.

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.”

He says that his rides with Randy enliven and sustain him. “The high is so so so so much better than drugs ever were,” he says. “It is the high of a full life. Riding, I feel it all.” Yes, I am optimistic. Do I stop worrying? No.

Nic. Where is Nic? Where is Nic? Where is Nic? Where is Nic? I must call Nic.

“Please, will you help me call my son? I don’t remember his telephone number. I have to call him.”

Hey, Dad, it’s me. What’s happening? Are you all right? I’m sure he is all right. I am never sure that he is all right.

Some of the times when Nic wasn’t all right it got so bad that I wanted to wipe out and delete and expunge every trace of him from my brain so that I would not have to worry about him anymore and I would not have to be disappointed by him and hurt by him and I would not have to blame myself and blame him and I would no longer have the relentless and haunting slide show of images of my lovely son, drugged, in the most sordid, horrible scenes imaginable. Once again: I wished in secret for a kind of lobotomy.

I was in wretched anguish and yearned for relief. I longed for someone to scrape out every remnant of Nic from my brain and scrape out the knowledge of what was lost and scrape out the worry and not only my anguish but his and the burning inside like I might scrape out the seeds ...

It felt as if nothing short of a lobotomy could alleviate the unremitting pain. It sinks in: I am in the neuro ICU after a cerebral hemorrhage, not a lobotomy but near enough. I am in a white room in the Medical Center at the University of California, San Francisco, haunted by sonar monitors and k...

I have had a kind of brain scraping, a potentially lethal one, and I cannot recall my name and the year and yet I am not spared the worrying that only parents of a child on drugs—I suppose a...

Is he in mortal peril? His beautiful brain, poisoned, possessed, on methamphetamine. I wanted to remove him erase him elide him from my brain, but he is there, even after this hemorrhage. We are connected to our children no matter what. They are interwoven into each cell and inseparable from every neuron. They supersede our consciousness, dwell in our every hollow and cavity and rec...

My son. Nothing short of my death can erase him. Maybe not even my death. What is h...

“Nic—” “Get some sleep. It will help more than anything.” “My son?” “Get some sleep.” “Will you please help me dial—” “Get some sleep.”

The drugs do not allay my terror. I want to call him to be sure that he is all right. I need to call him. I cannot remember. What is his number? It begins with three one oh.

The broken suitcase, my brain. Filled with everything I am. I cannot remember my name and I do not know where I am and I cannot remember his telephone number, the digits have spilled from the suitcase with the noise and mess of an overturned bucket of Legos or Nic’s collection of tiny seashells from China Beach when he was—was he four? They have spilled out because the lock has broken. My son is in danger. I cannot forget it even now, with my brain awash with toxic blood. Nic.

“What is your name?” The nurse again. “Can you dial my son?” “What’s his telephone number?” “Three one.” “Yes?” “I can’t.”

And mostly I feel better when Karen is here. She rests on my bed under the neon tubes enclosed in plastic underneath the square white ceiling panels with a constellation of pin-sized holes. She rests with me and she reads to me and I fall asleep. She is juggling the kids, everyone else, everything, our lives, but I want her with me, need her with me. When she is here, everything else falls away—worry, fear.