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

by David Sheff

It hurts so bad that I cannot save him, protect him, keep him out of harm’s way, shield him from pain. What good are fathers if not for these things? —THOMAS LYNCH, “The Way We Are”

In early fall 2018, Karen and I saw a cut of the movie adaptation of Beautiful Boy for the first time before it was first screened for the public at the Toronto International Film Festival. To say it was overwhelming and bizarre to watch our family played by these amazing actors is an understatement; it was beyond mind-twistingly surreal. Seeing the story from the outside – sitting in a theater and watching those people (us but not us but us??!?) gave me a new perspective on some of what happened when we were going through the worst years of Nic’s drug use. There’s a scene in which the director Felix has the dad/Carell going out and scoring meth in the middle of the night. It’s a moment that shows the depths of his despair. I never did that, but by creating the scene the director synthesizes two forces that drove me throughout those years. I was desperate to understand what was going on with Nic and at the same time wanted to escape the relentless fear and grief. I was desperate for the relief drugs promise but don’t deliver. They wouldn’t have helped; they didn’t help the dad in the movie.

I tried everything I could to prevent my son’s fall into meth addiction. It would have been no easier to have seen him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a meth addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality.

When I watched the Beautiful Boy movie, I was reminded of parts of Beautiful Boy in which I describe crystal meth as the worst drug of them all. Now I look at the drug-use and addiction crisis in America and realize there isn’t a “worst drug.” Meth is definitely one of the most neurotoxic, but if the worst drug is the one that kills the most people, currently the title goes to the opioids that are killing more people under 50 years old than ANYTHING ELSE. These pain pills like OxyContin and Vicodin and street drugs like heroin and fentanyl (and combinations) killed 72,000 people in 2017. That’s about 200 a day.

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. At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them.

The truth is I never set out to write Beautiful Boy. For the years Nic was using, on the streets – dying, I was in complete and utter turmoil. Writing served a purpose. In the book I wrote about the ways writing helped me get through anguished and sleepless nights. Writing also helped (a little) make sense out of the chaos in my brain. The point is that there was no self-censorship, just expurgation. I wasn’t thinking about the fact that others might read my secret thoughts. Then, when I decided to turn the raw writing into a book, my initial instinct was to edit out whatever embarrassed, shamed, or otherwise horrified me. I omitted the scene in which I smoked pot with Nic when he offered me a joint. I elided the references to my appalling behavior that preceded my divorce from Nic’s mom. And I cut some of my darkest thoughts. But I reinstated them all because I decided that the book would only be meaningful if it was true. Complete and unvarnished. I wish I’d been patient and understanding in ways I wasn’t. I did sometimes resent Nic and sometimes was enraged at him. I didn’t want to admit it, because I felt people might judge me – “how can you be angry at a child who’s suffering in the ways Nic was.” Instead, countless people wrote and said they’d felt what I’d felt and felt guilty for it. It comforted them to know they weren’t the only one. Going through this or any other life challenge is hard. I learned that we have to let ourselves feel the stress, pain, outrage, anger, guilt – all of it. A Buddhist teacher said, “We aren’t our worst thoughts.”

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.

Many people have written messages on facebook and twitter and said that this was a revelation for them. Like me, they’d tried everything, often for years, to help their child (or husband or wife, partner, parent, brother or sister, friend, etc) and nothing had worked. In the meantime, they were in constant hell. They related when I wrote that I’d become addicted to my son’s addiction. Yes, it was in a way liberating when I realized that I couldn’t choose for him whether he lived or died, but that’s not all I felt. To accept powerlessness can be a relief, but it’s scary as hell. I don’t think parents’ desire/need to protect our kids ever fully ends. So even as it freed me in one way, it devastated me in another. My parents are in their 80s and still anguish when my brother, sister, and I struggle. Being a parent can suck, but I’d never give it up for anything.

Drugs shield children from dealing with reality and mastering developmental tasks crucial to their future. The skills they lacked that left them vulnerable to drug abuse in the first place are the very ones that are stunted by drugs. They will have difficulty establishing a clear sense of identity, mastering intellectual skills, and learning self-control. The adolescent period is when individuals are supposed to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Teenagers with drug problems will not be prepared for adult roles . . . They will chronologically mature while remaining emotional adolescents.”

Nic relapsed after Beautiful Boy was published—I wrote about the last relapse in the latest edition Beautiful Boy. After that, when he finally got and stayed sober, he was 28, but in many ways he was – as he has said –15. Nic describes how he used drugs to avoid uncomfortable feelings and as a result never learned the lessons that we – all of us -- need to learn as we grow up: to cope when we fail; to experience having our hearts broken; to feel anxious and depressed, because sometimes we all do and will.It’s why recovery from addiction involves more than getting off drugs. It involves rebuilding a life and allowing a person to make up for the time lost. Its why many people in recovery need support for a long time.I can tell you some good news, though – Nic is proof that you can make up for the time lost, that you can thrive…

“Addicts may have many complaints, including major and minor grievances from years past. Some of their accusations may, in fact, have truth in them. Families may well have caused pain for the addicts. They may well have failed the addicts in some significant way. (After all, what human relationship is perfect?) But addicts bring up these problems not to clear the air or with the hope of healing old wounds. They bring them up solely to induce guilt, a tool with which they manipulate others in pursuit of their continued addiction.”

As is evident throughout Beautiful Boy, I didn’t need anyone else to blame me when Nic became addicted. When Nic lashed out, which he often did (as do many people who become addicted), it cut deeply, the stinging pain of salt poured into an open wound. It hurt so badly because he was attacking me for things I felt culpable for–the mistakes I’d made raising him. It helped when I finally understood that the attacks weren’t really about me. The addicted blame – often, their parents -- because otherwise they’d have to blame themselves.It’s an insidious trap – our children blame us and we’re ready to accept blame. Everyone suffers.

Addiction is an equal-opportunity affliction—affecting people without regard to their economic circumstance, their education, their race, their geography, their IQ, or any other factor.

I was really naïve. I really really really believed that drug “addicts” are the kinds of people we see huddled in the doorways of dark alleys – as I wrote, when we see them we cross the street. As I try to make clear in Beautiful Boy, I learned the hard way that anyone can become addicted. Now when I see strung-out kids on the street or women and men huddled in alleyways, obviously addicted and mentally ill, I see people, not “addicts.” It breaks my heart. I think of them and think of their parents. How have they’ve coped with the loss of their children? Have they given up hope? And what about these lost children? As I wrote, if these people had any other illness they’d be in the hospital, not on the streets. As a society we’re failing them.

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.

As a society, we still have this idea that people use drugs for fun – they love being high and don’t care about anyone or anything else. It was a revelation for me when I learned that drug use and addiction aren’t ultimately about feeling good, they’re about escaping pain. It seems as if they’re about feeling more, but they’re about feeling less or not at all. It was so hard to watch this play out when Nic would get sober. Instead of feeling better, he’d feel worse, at least initially. He felt worse because he was flooded with the pain from which he was running from in the first place. It’s why treating a person for addiction can’t just be about getting sober. It also has to uncover and treat the reasons a person used. Were they running from depression? Anxiety? Those need to be identified and treated, too. I’m obsessed with images from the Beautiful Boy movie since I just saw it. Nic (played by Timothee Chalamet) repeatedly relapses. When he’s in treatment, he does better. Like Nic did, when treatment ends, the Nic in the movie was committed to staying sober. HE DOESN’T WANT TO RELAPSE. But without drugs he’s hit with the pain he carried since he was a child.It’s not a surprise he relapsed. He continued to relapse until he began working with a psychiatrist who helped him figure out (and treat) the root of that pain, which included psychological problems like depression and bipolar disorder.

I have glimpses of the grandeur and the miracle, even as I feel the inexorable slide of time. The children growing up, with both the sadness and excitement of it. Mostly the inevitability of it. I feel it all.

Before it was published, I asked the writer Annie Lamott to read the manuscript. I looked to her for guidance. She’s open and inspiring when she talks about her own recovery from addiction. And I love her writing. After reading the book, Annie told me that at that time, reeling from the years our family was in hell, I was understandably focused on the parts of the book that describe the hard times we’d faced: the worst of Nic’s addiction and the suffering we endured. Then Annie said that someday I’d reread the book and see something else. She said I’d be happy I’d written the book because of the stories I recorded that showed that it wasn’t only hell. There was joy and laughter. And it’s true. I laugh aloud when I’m reminded of moments like this one, when we pull into a convenience store, and very young Jasper observes, “It’s not very convenient. It’s closed.” If I hadn’t written the book, would I have remembered that and countless other moments? What about when Daisy describes a “beauteous” day in the mountains or when the three kids are running around the yard, Jasper and Nic with super-soaker squirt guns and daisy using a garden hose to drench her brothers? It saw it when I watched the movie, too. Of course it was devastating to watch, but I laughed, too, and my heart melted when I watched from the seat in a movie theater scenes that reminded me that even at the worst of it there were moments of joy and always love.

I look back at the dismal statistics I was given years ago by a nurse about the success rates for rehab of meth addicts—single-digit success. I understand that it’s unrealistic to think that many addicts will stay sober forever after one or two or three or however many tries at sobriety, but maybe the more meaningful statistic is this, related by one of the lecturers at a rehab: “More than half of the people who enter rehab are sober ten years out, which doesn’t mean that they haven’t been in and out of sobriety.”

In the Beautiful Boy movie, actor Timothy Hutton plays a researcher modeled after researchers in the book. As I tried to figure out how to treat Nic’s addiction, I asked the directors and admissions people at treatment programs about their success rates for treating addicted patients. As I write in the book, I was given exaggerated numbers that I later learned were made up – yes, I was lied to. The movie repeats the more realistic number I repeated in the book: the success rate of treatment of meth addiction is in the single digits. It’s gotten somewhat better since then. As bad as things are ten years since Beautiful Boy was published, there and new and more successful treatment options and the success rates are higher, but only for people who are lucky enough to get into good treatment programs and work with good addiction doctors. One in ten people who need treatment get any. And of those who do, few get good – what scientists call evidence-based treatments. For example, if people addicted to opioids are given addiction medications like buprenorphine, they’re far more likely to stay sober. If medications are combined with other proven therapies the success rates are higher still. Good treatment works.

we are now united in one of the most primal of human behaviors, trying to save our child. The therapist says that the weekend is not about blaming, but about moving beyond lingering resentment. A father here says, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

I think about this all the time. It’s a simple line but profound.After going through the hell of Nic’s addiction and other challenges, including the brain hemorrhage I write about, I’d like to say that I no longer feel petty resentments, that instead I always appreciate life, celebrate the moment, am generous and forgiving, and always loving. Well, I don’t. Maybe a Buddhist monk can transcend the emotions most of us feel, but maybe it’s ok that we do. It means we’re human. But that’s not to say that things haven’t changed. Maybe the difference is that I’ve learned to see myself clearer, to look at the feelings that possess me and dissect them. And rather than push them aside because I don’t want to or feel as if I shouldn’t feel them, I allow myself to feel them. Ironically, when I do, they dissipate. When I watched the movie, I watched Nic’s dad and mom blame each other and recognized that they weren’t only trying to absolve themselves. They were reacting because they were afraid.They came together when they recognized that they were in this together – were as scared – and had the same goal: to save their son. Any trace of resentment was gone.

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.

I don’t remember ever explaining to Nic why I said “everything” to him. As I explain the book, I said it to express the mix of intense feelings when he was leaving to visit his mom in LA- I’m sorry and, most of all, I love you. Soon we said it when we talked on the phone. We said it at night when he was going to sleep. We said it and then I sang John Lennon’s song that still melts my heart: “Beautiful Boy.” “Darling boy.” Everything.” In a way I never could have, the writers of the movie (Felix Van Groeningen and Luke Davies) found a way to explain the full meaning of the small word when the dad David (played by actor Steve Carell) says, in his gentlest voice, that he loves his son (when Nic is young in the film) more than everything. The little boy asks, “Everything?” And the dad repeats, “Everything.” That scene brought tears. Over the years I’ve heard from (and still hear from) parents who tell me that after reading the book or seeing the movie, the word “everything” became part of their family, too: a way of describing how big their love is for their children, as big as everything.