Bibliotherapy for the parent of an addict

Lately, I have taken a little break from YA reading (not completely--see my post about Death Cloud here.) and read a few adult and professional items. Something that has been on my pile for months was Beatiful Boy: a father's journey through his son's addiction by David Sheff. There is so much one could say about this book that I am not sure I will be able to do it justice. It is beautifully written--Mr. Sheff is a writer for literary magazines and news outlets--and also quite painful to read. Nic Sheff was a beautiful boy who became an addict. Sheff tells his own story, which is that of his addiction, if you will, to worrying about Nic, trying to fix everything for him, trying to get him back on the path to a successful future. If you have adult children, you know the painful truth that as much as you may want to save them, they are individuals who make their own choices. Eventually Sheff comes to this realization through fits and starts. He wanders through support groups, rehab clinics, does copious research into addiction, and most of all keeps loving his son. I would like to say that it had a happy ending, but Nic is an addict, and so there is always the chance that he will be gripped by the desire to do drugs again. At the close of the book, he is sober, but that may not last.

David Sheff's struggle was with his all consuming worry. The most emotionally touching scene in the book for me was when David goes looking for Nic during one of his binges. Nic has been gone for a few days, and David goes into some of the neighborhoods where Nic usually gets drugs. He doesn't find Nic, but he finds a girl, 19, obviously a meth addict. He offers to take her to lunch at McDonalds and she goes. During their conversation, Sheff listens to her story, and then pleads with her to call her parents. He says, "they would want to know that you are alive." He is thinking of how much he would like to know that Nic is alive, how much he waits by the telephone hoping for a call and at the same time dreading it, since it might be to tell him that Nic is dead. She refuses, as past contact with her parents has ended with her in rehab, and she thinks she is "OK" when she is doing meth. I guess if OK is defined as trading your body for drugs and living in an abandoned building, she is. She calls herself a "good girl" growing up. She didn't have any particular beef with her parents, she just liked her life on drugs more than she liked it without them. She wouldn't even call her parents to relieve them of their worry about her. I found this extremely sad.

I can see parents and teachers of students who are addicts benefitting greatly from this book. It is not a book of advice, there are no twelve steps to getting your kid off drugs; it is a real portrayal of what it feels like to be the parent of an addict, the enormous pain and hope that grips one by turns. At the least, the reader will know that he is not alone, and that there is hope, and that it is not his fault. Although he, like Sheff, may never fully accept that it is not his fault, he will see that life can and does continue, albeit changed forever.

Nic Sheff has also written some books and articles about life as a recovering addict.