Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through His Son’s Addiction is a memoir written by David Sheff. He highlights the plight of his son, Nic, whose drug addiction metamorphoses from marijuana and alcohol to cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. The author details the upbringing of Nic since he was born and tries to establish his failures as a parent that led the son to resort to drugs (Sheff, 2008). When Nic was born, his parents were happy to raise another human being besides them and take care of him. Sheff (2008) states that he wished the best for Nic, and believed that his life would aim at prosperity. As the drugs continue to have a debilitating effect on the user, the effects spill over to the family. Furthermore, society feels the adversity of drug addiction. The author blames himself for ignoring the initial signs of his son’s problems because he believed the excuses that Nic put across to absolve himself. The book brings into the limelight the misery of drug addiction to the user, the myriad of feelings such as guilt and shame that engulf parents of children with addiction because they serve as the primary source of social support.

Drug addiction is a gradual addiction, and it takes time before its effects are full-blown. Sheff (2008) suspected that Nic was into drugs and summoned him. However, his inquiry was met with excuses that halted his efforts from stopping his son’s continuous intake of drugs. With all these happening, he noted the effects of drugs that rendered Nic display helplessness and loss of control. The addiction disorder had a toll on Nic, and he ended up breaking into his father’s home. After that experience, Sheff (2008) narrates how he developed anxiety and had many sleepless nights while portraying hypervigilance that Nic would break in again. Besides, Sheff worried when his son was on the streets. He faced an actual possibility of never seeing Nic due to the likelihood of being kidnapped, dead, or incarceration from delinquency associated with drug use. Such experiences highlight the distress encountered by parents when their children have a drug addiction problem.

One does not become an addict without cause. It is this reason that Sheff tries to establish the underlying cause of Nic’s problem. First, he identifies that Nic grew in a disintegrated family because of an early divorce that affected his childhood (Sheff, 2008). He had to be initiated to therapy sessions at an early age because his parents adopted co-parenting as the best approach to split their time with him. Additionally, Nic’s childhood was destabilized due to the long distance between his father and mother. Now and then, he had to connect flights between Los Angeles and San Francisco to visit either of the parents (Sheff, 2008). As a result, Nic’s addiction is attributable to a troubled childhood. Additionally, Sheff saw himself in the eyes of his son because of his history of smoking marijuana. Through his experience, he warns Nic about marijuana because he knew it would be a gateway to hard drugs (Sheff, 2008). Despite his worry, he embraces an unconventional way of smoking marijuana with Nic as a way of child-father bonding. Subsequently, as Sheff tries to find a solution for his son’s drug problem, he heaps blame on himself as an enabler to his addiction. He starts wishing a reverse of the circumstances that could have contributed to it, such as avoiding the divorce, not informing Nic of his past substance use, and avoiding smoking a joint with him (Sheff, 2008). The contemplation shows the hurt of a father who hopes that the son stops indulging in drugs.

In conclusion, the memoir is educative because it details the first-hand experience with drugs coupled with its effects on the immediate family. Similarly, it illustrates the hardships in trying to help people with drug addiction by seeking therapeutical and pharmaceutical treatment. While the medication might work, accompanying the affected individuals to support groups is instrumental for their recovery because of the social connection, but the fear of relapse persists.

Reference

Sheff, D. (2008). Beautiful boy: A father’s journey through his son’s addiction. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.