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

by David Sheff

I’m not sure if I know any “functional” families, if functional means a family without difficult times and members who don’t have a full range of problems.

I do not subscribe to the concept of karma, but I have come to believe in instant karma, as it was defined by John Lennon in his song of that name. It means, in essence, that we reap what we sow in this lifetime—and

“Every writer and artist I love was a drunk or an addict.” I know that Nic uses drugs because he feels cleverer and less introverted and insecure, and he also carries the dangerous—and fallacious—idea that debauchery leads to the greatest art, whether by Hemingway, Hendrix, or Basquiat.

Perhaps I cannot pray because I never have, I do not know how, and I cannot conceive of a god to pray to. But as John Lennon said: “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”

“Insanity is the insistence on meaning,”

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.

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”