MIRROR IMAGES

A father and son write simultaneously about the ills of drug addiction

WHEN 18-year-old Nic Sheff fell in love for the first time, it hit him hard, a sunny infatuation quickly turning into obsession. Unfortunately, he was smitten by a drug, not a person, and this protracted affair would alienate him from his family and siphon off his humanity, he writes in Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines. Any question of the memoir’s credibility is answered in Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by Nic’s dad, author and veteran journalist David Sheff. These simultaneously published books offer a rare mirror on a scourge that is ravaging America. But ultimately both are mining their memories as an act of deeply personal therapy.

David Sheff’s book is the more effective—and affecting—narrative, rich with topical research and personal revelation. Beautiful Boy benefits from Sheff’s acute journalist’s eye as well as his unconditional love for a troubled son. “He looks like someone who survived a famine,” Sheff writes of Nic, emerging from yet another tweaking binge. “My affection for him is tempered by my fear of him.”

Nic’s story is devoid of mouth-watering details or ecstatic descriptions of getting high. Moving faster than the speed of life, he doesn’t spend much time exulting in the buzz. Meth propels Nic into spirals of hyperactivity, an endless loop of mad, half-baked scheming and plotting. Any quest pursued while “tweaking” invariably ends in disarray or disaster, whether it’s taking apart your computer, breaking into your parents’ house, launching a profitable second career as a street drug dealer or all three at once.

One devastating effect is how it replaces any moral qualms with a mercenary sense of purpose. After a year of rehab, this educated product of New York City and Northern California’s suburbs relapses, becoming an utterly remorseless thief. When the pull of his suburban haunts proves irresistible, Nic reunites with an old flame and fellow user who fuels his worst instincts. “Honestly I can’t see Lauren living in the car with me. I need her to have access to her house and access to her parents’ money. It’s not that I don’t care about her, I’m just trying to be realistic.”

Both father and son lay a lot of blame on David’s divorce from Nic’s mother, and he admits compensating for the split by acting more as friend than parent to Nic. “Now I look back in horror,” David writes, “on the time I smoked marijuana with him…If only I had protected him more from my adult life.”

One is tempted to conclude that the self-lacerating father is too hard on himself while his prodigal son isn’t judgmental enough. Nic’s flashes of insight sound recited, as if he’s trying to convince himself as well as his counselors. And when David offers the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen as summary and valediction, their familiar lines fall flat in the face of his hard-earned wisdom.

The conclusion of Beautiful Boy demonstrates the truth behind the cliché, that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Tweak ends on a suitably melancholy note: A chastened Nic regains some of his promise as a writer and his humanity. – Mark Coleman LAT-WP