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

by David Sheff

Others’ experiences did help with my emotional struggle; reading, I felt a little less crazy.

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.

Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.

Nietzsche is often quoted for having said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” This is absolutely true for family members of an addict. Not only am I still standing, but I know more and feel more than I once thought was possible.

We deny the severity of our loved one’s problem, not because we are naive, but because we can’t know.

No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die.

She explains that severe cognitive impairments may make patients incapable of participating in therapies that require concentration, logic, and memory.

If your child had cancer, the support from your friends and family would flood in. Because of the stigma of addiction, people often keep it quiet. Their friends and family may try to be supportive, but they may also communicate a subtle or unsubtle judgment.”

The speaker cries and cries. Her daughter sits next to her, stone-faced.

“One moment a spark of hope gleams, the next a sea of despair rages; and always the pain, the pain, always the anguish, the same thing on and on,” wrote Tolstoy.

He has a disease, but addiction is the most baffling of all diseases, unique in the blame, shame, and humiliation that accompany it.

wished that he had any other illness, because no one would blame him.