Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

by Nic Sheff

“I felt like everyone else had gotten this instruction manual that explained life to them, but somehow I’d just missed it. They all seemed to know exactly what they were doing while I didn’t have a clue. That is, until I found drugs and alcohol. Then it was like my world suddenly went from black-and-white to Technicolor.”

One of the saddest but most important things I see when I look back is that Nic was so good at showing me, Karen, and his mom, plus teachers and even therapists, what we wanted to see that we didn’t see how much he suffered. It breaks my heart.

There is this crazy fear I have of being rejected by anyone—even people I don’t really care about. It’s always better to leave them first, cut all ties, and disappear. They can’t hurt me that way—no one can.

It’s amazing that Nic had the insight to see in himself what many of us (even as adults) don’t – how we hurt ourselves when we try to protect ourselves. I remember times I brought Nic to the airport to go to visit his mom in LA and also when he came back from visiting her. I remember him once saying, “I’m always missing someone.” No wonder he found ways to protect himself-that is, not to that feel. One was drugs.

care. Isn’t that the greatest gift in the world—just not to care? I feel so grateful for it. That’s nothing I ever knew sober.

Earlier in Tweak Nic talked about how he cut ties with people to protect himself so he wouldn’t be hurt by them. The fact is, life is hard and often hurts. Who wants to feel pain? When I was a teenager, I didn’t want to care, either, and like Nic I turned to drugs. I never became addicted-maybe I was just lucky – but I could easily have killed myself. My best friend and college roommate did.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate my life sober. I appreciate Spencer, Michelle, my family, my job, but it’s like there are two different people battling inside me. I want to be good, do good, be a worker among workers, a friend among friends. But there’s also this part of me that is so dissatisfied with everything. If I’m not living on the verge of death, I feel like I’m not really living.

When I first read this, it made me so sad, but it wasn’t a surprise. I saw that in Nic growing up. I wonder if it’s because he had depression and bipolar disorder that wasn’t diagnosed until he was an adult? People who don’t feel want to feel. They want to do the right thing – for themselves, for others – but they just can’t. I wonder if things would have been easier for him if I’d found a psychiatrist who would have recognized what was wrong and treated it? I have to think it would have made a profound difference – not like it helps to go back and ask “if only…”

So at work each day I ask God to be with me as I fold the towels, or answer the phones, or even just talk with the girls. Spencer has told me to always pray in the affirmative, as though the prayer has already been answered. I should say, “Thank you, God, for helping me be kind and patient.” As opposed to, “Please, God, help me be patient.” Affirmative prayer reinforces that you have already received the guidance, therefore you are able to focus on the solution. Saying that I need help just reinforces the problem—helping me wallow in it.

When I read Tweak, I was learned for the first time about how bad it got for Nic when he was on the streets, using every drug he could find, and nearly dying. As much as I knew it was horrible, the reality was worse than I imagined. That’s all I could focus on – I was in tears on every page. Later I read the book again. Of course it was still hard and it broke my heart, but I also was able to see the wisdom Nic learned over the course of his addiction and recovery. Many people don’t survive drug use and addiction. There’s no hope for them and their families are devastated forever. Those who do survive, though, can have lives better than they ever could have imagined. One reason is the truth of the old adage: That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And it can make you wiser, too.

“Being sober isn’t just about not using. Being sober is about the joy a life of clarity and living by spiritual principles can bring. There is nothing greater than that. Forget drugs. Forget needles. Forget everything. We are living to experience the undiluted amazement of life on life’s terms.

For the years Nic was in the midst of his addiction, when I didn’t know if he’d make it, my life also deteriorated. I could barely function. I had to recover, too, and over the years of that recovery I experienced, as Nic so eloquently puts it, “the undiluted amazement of life on life’s terms.” His story can be inspiration to all of us, no matter what we’re suffering, whether it’s our own or a loved one’s addiction or any of the other challenges we face. Watching Nic learn and grow – as he’s built the kind of life he always wanted (and I always wanted for him) – I’ve learned from him to appreciate life in new ways- and I do. It doesn’t mean I still don’t struggle – I definitely do – but it’s ok, because it’s part of life and inevitable. We all wish it wasn’t, but there’s freedom when we accept it. I think that’s what Nic means when he talks about experiencing life on life’s terms.

Just remember, Nic, the only thing that ever really gives us any genuine satisfaction is caring for other people. It doesn’t matter how popular we are or anything. The only thing that actually makes life more fulfilling is our love for others. When I help you, I’m really helping myself—saying yes to humanity and to the connection that exists among all people. And the results speak for themselves.

In my own life I’ve seen how profound Nic’s insight is. When we’re focusing on caring about and helping others who suffer, we aren’t focusing on our own suffering, and there’s something else that happens, too. I think it has to do with connecting with all humanity, understanding that we’re all in this together. Our hearts get hardened because life is so hard. The more we soften them, the more we experience compassion and love.

“As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and complete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are—what others say is irrelevant.”

When Nic wrote this it reminded me of something the writer Annie Lamott said that has helped me. She suggests that we try not to compare our insides with other people’s outsides. It can look as if everyone else is doing great – they’re sailing along – but no one sails along.

Now is now. That’s what he always tells me. There is nothing but now and I try to hold on to that. The past is gone, the future hasn’t happened yet. This, right here, is all there is.

Nic wrote Tweak when he was…. I think he must have been only in his early 20s. At that young age, he discovered truths that the greatest writers and philosophers taught. I’ve been working on a book about a man named Jarvis Masters, who’s a death-row prisoner in California, who became a Buddhist. He told a Buddhist story he learned that’s helped me in my life. A man is in the forest when he comes across a group of tigers, who begin chasing him. He gets to the edge of a cliff. The tigers are coming, so he grabs onto a vine and climbs over the edge, holding on. He looks down and sees that there are tigers waiting below him, too. He hears a noise and looks up and sees a mouse gnawing at the vine to which he clings. Then he looks directly in front of him and sees a bush with beautiful red strawberries. He looks down at the waiting tigers, and then up at the tigers above and, below them, a mouse gnawing at the vine. He reaches out and plucks a strawberry and pops it into his mouth. It tastes amazing. We all live like that – tigers above, tigers below, and a mouse gnawing. We can spend all our time worrying about those or look in front of us, which is the present. If we do, we can see the strawberries and taste them.

They say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Well, the problem of being human isn’t really so temporary and sometimes a permanent solution seems like the best possible way out.

It breaks my heart to know that Nic considered suicide at some points in his life. He says that one of the things that saved him was seeing a person try to kill herself. It scared the hell out of him. But still I understand the desire to escape pain. It’s why some people do kill themselves and why some use drugs. Life is hard and sometimes it’s more than hard and seems unbearable. But it’s also true that suicide and drugs can seem like solutions to problems that can never get better, but that’s because it can be impossible to see hope when we feel that bad. From my own life I’ve learned that as bad as things get if I hold on, the depression or fear lifts. Which reminds me of the John Lennon song Nic quotes in his other memoir, We All Fall Down: Hold on, it’s going to be all right. What I’ve learned is that as bad as things get, they will get better. I’ve also learned that we shouldn’t try to go it alone. It gets better quicker when we don’t hide what we’re going through, but reach out to others, whether it’s family, friends, counselors…. Anyone. I’m so proud of Nic. And inspired by him. I love his honesty.