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Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
Houghton Mifflin Co Product Details |
Amazon.com
Amazon Best of the Month, February 2008: From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction. Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective of his father, David. Achingly honest, it chronicles the betrayal, pain, and terrifying question marks that haunt the loved ones of an addict. Many respond to addiction with a painful oath of silence, but David Sheff opens up personal wounds to reinforce that it is a disease, and must be treated as such. Most importantly, his journey provides those in similar situations with a commodity that they can never lose: hope --Dave Callanan
Product Description
Sheff s story is a first: a teenager s addiction from the parent s point of view a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope. Before meth, Sheff s son Nic was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs, the denial (by both child and parents), the three A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the attempts at rehab, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict s fate, the rest of the family must care for each other too, lest they become addicted to addiction. Meth is the fastest-growing drug in the United States, as well as the most addictive and the most dangerous wreaking permanent brain damage faster than any other readily available drug. It has invaded every region and demographic in America. This book is the first that treats meth and its impact in depth. But it is not just about meth. Nic s addiction has wrought the same damage that any addiction will wreak. His story, and his father s, are those of any family that contains an addict and one in three American families does.
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Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
- Hardcover: 326 pages (2008-02-26)
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co; 2008-02-26
- Label: Houghton Mifflin Co
- Studio: Houghton Mifflin Co
- ISBN: 0618683356
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 108 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #915
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Boy 2008-08-17
Comment: Great Book! New book so product was in perfect shape. Delivery quick. This book is a wonderful story about addiction and a parents journey. Recommend this book for all who have travelled down this road!!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful boy 2008-08-14
Comment: Another wonderful book that I have recommended to several members of our Family Annyomous group. Very enlighting as to what the addict goes through and how his family tried to help him. Gives hope to family members of addicts. Something we don't always have much of.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Love? Sacrifice? Principle? 2008-08-12
Comment: I must admit, I couldn't get past the first twenty pages. So far, the author has written of the years of self-incrimination he's suffered, but ultimately he reaches the conclusion that we all must make our own life and death decisions, and he chooses life. Then, he begins to chronicle his experience: how having their first child complicates his relationship with his first wife, the child's mother, so he has an affair. At the first counseling session, he pronounces the marriage over. The divorce gets messy, and an arbitrator decides that the child should stay with the father in San Francisco except for holidays and the summer, when he'll be shuffled off to Mom in LA. At five, the child is flying alone. That's as far as I could go. Thank goodness for professionals like the arbitrator who acts in a child's interest by tearing his life in two, and most of all for the father who has never grasped that love means sacrifice. Another self-interested memoir about the "life struggles" of California's whine and cheese set? No thanks. I took it back to the library in favor of a recent biography of Washington. I'll wager the author wouldn't have the fortitude to survive a day in Washington's shoes. And Washington is ennobled by his adherence to principles, which as far as the author appears to know, are the people who run the public schools.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A moving and compassionate tale of a father's love 2008-08-09
Comment: How painful this must have been to write, yet cathartic to do at the same time. This journey is incredibly thought-povoking and heart-breaking, especially for parents. The pain of addiction that can shatter a family is made real and vivid in this tale of love and courage. An insightful read that takes a difficult decision and provokes the reader to contemplate what he would do in those situations. Highly moving; hard to put down.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: true definition of honesty 2008-08-05
Comment: if you really want to read an all out honest book....this is it!....Sheff could not have been any more real than he was on this book....it is beautiful written....i am so glad i read this book....it was totally worth my time.
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