BEAUTIFUL BOY
A Father's Journey Through
His Son's Addiction
By David Sheff
Thomas Allen, 320 pages, $26.95
Just a few chapters into his book, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction, U.S. journalist David Sheff explains: "Drug stories are sinister. Like some war stories, they focus on adventure and escape. In the tradition of a long line of famous and infamous carousers and their chroniclers, even hangovers and near-death experiences and visits to the emergency room can be made to seem glamorous. But often the storytellers omit the slow, degenerative psychic trauma, and finally, casualties."
Sheff could have been talking about Tweak, his son Nic's memoir of his crystal-meth addiction, published in tandem with his own book, which tells his side of the story. While Tweak is a wild ride about exploits in the thick of the California drug scene, Beautiful Boy reveals a family's trauma, described in painstaking detail, with "Where is Nic?" being among the most repeated phrases. That certainly has an effect.
So does David Sheff's decision to begin the story with the birth of his son, depicting him as a loving, smart, talented and charming darling of the family, whose life takes a turn when his parents divorce and he is forced to spend summers and holidays in Los Angeles with his mother and school years with his father in San Francisco.
Nic took his first drink when he was 11; his addiction to drugs was full-blown by the time he was 18. Rehab attempts were interrupted by relapses, overdoses, more rehab and, ultimately, by the end of both books, two years of sobriety. Beautiful Boy recounts David Sheff's endeavours to guide his son away from drugs and, as time goes by, to save him. It is the extension of a story he wrote for The New York Times Magazine in 2005, one for which he got plenty of feedback from parents in similar situations. In the book, his personal story is punctuated by extensive research done to understand methamphetamines, their effect on the body and brain, rehab and its success rates, the war on drugs in the United States and what could be causing Nic's addiction.
He is full of self-recrimination: Did he make a mistake telling Nic about his own past drug use? Was the divorce and custody arrangement too hard on the boy? Was he more concerned about being a friend to Nic than an authoritative parent? He worries about whether to shield his two young children from the truth about Nic, he seeks advice from medical professionals, and frets over his addicted son to the point that his head literally explodes with a hemorrhage in the middle of writing the book.
It's hard to fault a story about a father's love for his son, and how that plays out when the son has a problem as complex and tragic as crystal meth, one of the hardest drugs to kick. However, Beautiful Boy too often reads like a guide for families on crystal meth, its effects and how to survive it, though providing no definitive conclusions.
Of course, there are none, but as a journalist, Sheff arms himself with almost too much information, interrupting the story's pace, thereby diluting its emotional punch. The book is strongest when he enters wholeheartedly into the story's raw emotion:
"Fortunately there is a beautiful boy. Unfortunately he has a terrible disease. Fortunately there is love and joy. Unfortunately there is pain and misery. Fortunately the story is not over."
Carla Lucchetta is a writer and TV producer in Toronto.