I’ve been thinking about addiction lately. A relative of mine is struggling mightily with this problem, prompting a great deal of concern among those of us who love him.

I’ve probably known more than an average number of addicts. My first job out of college was at a pysch hospital and various people I worked with were in recovery. I always seemed to get along well with them. Most of us go around trying to put on a good face for people, but recovering addicts tell it like it is. Honesty is what keeps them sober. And they always had interesting stories to tell.

I’m sure it was experiences past and present that drew me to David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy. It’s a father’s account of his promising young son’s descent into meth addition (I got it at the library in the “playaway” audio version, which is book and mini player in one and is the latest reason why I think we have the coolest library ever). The tale is heart-wrenching as Sheff watches his “beautiful boy” become a stranger.

“Yet he is a stranger whose every part I know intimately. I recall his soft eyes when they were elated and when they were disappointed, his face when he was pallid from illness and when he was burned red by the sun, his mouth and even each tooth from visits to dentists and the orthodontist, his knees from when he skinned them and I put on Band-Aids, his shoulders from putting on sun block, he feet from taking out splinters — every part of him.”

This passage gave voice to a nagging disquietude I’ve had about parenthood. There’s this being that you love more than anything in this world and know like the back of your hand but yet is completely separate from you. It’s like having an organ outside your body, exposed. When they’re young, like mine are, it’s easy to feel protecting them is within your power. But as they grow older, and more independent, we have to watch as they make their way in the world. Inevitably, some will wander into the insidious snare of addiction.

The hopeful message in Sheff’s account is that love can be the thread that draws addicts back from the brink (Nic Sheff wrote his own account of the experience in a book called Tweak. See them talking about their companion memoirs in this You Tube clip). The way back is fraught with uncertainty, and Sheff offers no simple solutions. The cure for addiction is as amorphous as the disease. But from what I have seen and read, it’s clear that for addicts — and troubled youth of all stripes – as long as they are alive, there is hope.

Tags: addiction, Beautiful Boy, David Sheff

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