Book Report: “Beautiful Boy” by David Sheff

A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction

Before I had even finished “Beautiful Boy,” I confronted my 18yo son in the living room: “Max, I’m reading this unbelievably tragic book about an amazing kid like you who develops a terrible meth addiction without his very attentive father even knowing it. Do you have anything to tell me?”

Thankfully, Max didn’t. I believed him. But David Sheff’s account of his beautiful son’s drug addiction will haunt me for a long time. (As will the surprisingly good Netflix movie version.) In agonizing detail, the story makes real and possible what most parents regard as a distant nightmare scenario they will never have to deal with.

Sheff is a writer and journalist, so the book is well-written. The author admits that writing and research became his primary coping mechanisms as he watched his son’s irrational descent into meth addiction. He learns everything there is to learn about meth and the brain science of addiction. He interviews scientists and professors, networks with parents, and becomes an expert himself in the confusing world of treatment and rehab. He writes articles about his experience that give hope to many.

None of this saves his son, though. Which is the maddening part. The dramatic arc of the book follows Sheff’s inner struggle at coming to terms with his limitations as a father. At an Al-Anon meeting towards the end of the book he learns to stop confronting his son and start confronting himself. (Al-Anon being an organization for parents and friends of addicts.) The Three Cs of Al-Anon finally start to register: You didn’t Cause it, you can’t Control it, and you can’t Cure it.

With unflinching honesty, Sheff admits he’s not convinced—at least not on the matter of “causing it.” He knows his painful divorce from Nic’s mom, and the constant shuttling between cities, was not good for his son’s psyche. He regrets his own drug past, telling Nic about it, and smoking a joint with his son in an unwise attempt at father-son bonding. No, he didn’t cause it. But he didn’t not-cause it, either.

As a sensitive, devoted, and literary dad, I connected with this book—or at least with the author. My other son Mitchell was not a drug addict, but battled a mysterious neurological disease for 8 years that ultimately took his life. (For the record, he tried more drugs than Nic ever did—of a different sort, of course.) As Mitchell’s body and eventually his mind deteriorated, I too tried to cope through writing and research. My wife and I flew to hospitals to interview experts to get him help. We endured long-term hospitalizations hoping they held the cure. When nothing worked, I still held on too tightly to the future that I grew up dreaming for Mitchell—a future in which his full potential as my own beautiful boy could still be realized. When Nic drops out of college, it is a defining moment for the bereft father who realizes his son’s life will never be what he dreamed it to be. He knows he has to let his son go, and let him live his own life—even if it ends in his death.

I know the feeling. Withdrawing Mitchell from college, due to what would become his final “relapse,” was a sad day among many sad days.

Maybe my point here is that you don’t need to have a drug-addicted child to understand and take something from “Beautiful Boy.” You might not even need to have children. You just have to have the courage to accept that you can’t always help the ones you love the most.

It is a hard lesson.

-Matt Herndon (11/2/2020)