Beautiful Blindness

My son is handsome, charming, athletic, and capable of becoming anything that he wants to be. It seems as though everyone who meets him is destined to become spellbound by his intelligence, his keen insight. If I had a son, that is, all the aforementioned would be true .

It seems as though many well-meaning, devoted parents describe their children in a similar way, a way that exemplifies a sort of parental groupthink, which highlights the parental tendency to view one’s child with delusional radiance. Moreover, parents often have a blurred perception of their children’s wrongdoings. Perhaps this is unavoidable, nature’s blunder, but the parental tendency to rationalize the children’s behavior is exceedingly commonplace. For whatever reason, this blinding adoration tends to expound to utter denial of any malfunction or inadequacy inherent to a child, despite its appearance to others, despite the distress and pain that feeds upon such denial.

Aptly titled, Beautiful Boy is a memoir that begins with writer, David Sheff’s acknowledgment of this common parental deficiency. It begins by emphasizing the narrator’s guilt, his self-defined contribution to his son’s drug addiction. Sheff, being an outstanding writer, seems to pull this off without portraying a sense of pity. He also recounts his son’s young childhood rather abruptly, before acknowledging that he now recognizes his own misconceptions about his son. He pledges to readers to attempt to step away from this parental role and describe it in the most beneficial way, from a more journalistic stance.

His son’s battle with crystal methamphetamine addiction as well as other drugs and alcohol escalates as the memoir moves forward, and ultimately ends with Sheff’s recognition of the fact that his son’s battle is, in fact, is his alone to fight. However, it quickly becomes apparent that his fatherly voice is impossible to silence completely; therefore, the memoir seems to shift drastically in narrative tone, from article to personal essay, memoir, and back again.

The story begins by displaying Sheff’s guilt with passages such as, “No child benefits from the bitterness and savagery of a divorce like ours,” and “It doesn’t take much longer for me to realize that my bachelor-father lifestyle probably isn’t great for Nic,” and so on. Sheff grasps for reasons, rationalizations that justify the horrific battle between good (his son) and evil (drugs) as he witnesses it, as a father who wants to help to fix the situation but is continuously reminded that he cannot. Yet, even with the publication of this memoir he continues to try, tugging the reader along as he recounts his son’s journey as well as his own desire to find the cure to (or at least figure out) addiction.

Even after everything we have been through, I am stunned. Nic is injecting drugs—shooting them into his arms, arms that not that long ago threw baseballs and built Lego castles, arms that wrapped around my neck when I carried his sleepy body in from the car at night (Sheff).

Sheff utilizes his journalistic background in an attempt to expose the nature of addiction and the chemistry of drugs along with their biological effects on the human body. Sheff reports statistics about the number of children who use drugs, the numbers that are rising and falling and where; he reports the sources of drugs and the patterns of abuse, the business of drugs, and perhaps most substantially, the big—and inadequate—business of recovery and the questionable culture of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA). I appreciate that Sheff tells an open-ended tale, rather than tying the ending up with a pretty bow. The numbers state that addiction is a lifelong illness, and Sheff has acknowledged this in as honest and thorough a way as I believe possible for a parent.

Although the journalistic disconnect that Sheff demonstrates is necessary for a reliable and coherent story, it is also, perhaps, a cop-out. What a reader knows and learns about Sheff's son, Nic, is that he is beautiful—when he's not high. When he's high, he's an addict like any other—consumed, poisoned by the sinister presence of chemicals in his bloodstream. He is no longer accountable when he is high, he is merely sick. And addicts, who are disease-ridden people, are sick because they are addicted. I don't buy it. I never have, not since my mother allowed me to attend one of her NA meetings when I was a young child. I remember watching these self-proclaimed addicts announce their powerlessness over drugs and thinking it sounded like an excuse. When I told my father that I hid my broccoli in my napkin because I was powerless over my distaste for the heady bitterness of vegetables; Dad didn’t buy it. It was good for me, so I had to get over my distaste. This is what I thought then, about those “addicts,” that they were making excuses for not doing what they needed to.

Sheff, in the beginning of his tale, admits to a similar wariness toward the prevailing message that an addict is powerless. He seems eager to dismiss the concept. With journalistic keenness, he asks readers how anyone could buy the excuse that addicts cannot control their actions; but he is assured by another parent of an addict that he will change his outlook. As the book progresses, he does, ending his memoir with a cautiously optimistic view surrounding his son's current sobriety.

I suppose this is the point, to put forth a book that will appeal to others who have loved ones that battle or submit to addiction; but the picture of a father witnessing his son’s drug abuse seems, to me, incomplete. Sheff’s book describes the evil of drugs, yes, and their impact on American society, OK, but he does not broach any reasonable explanation as to why his son first decided to partake.

Meanwhile, a reader need only get to page eighteen of Nic Sheff's book Tweak to find a passage that proves a certain amount of misery preceded Nic’s initial drug use. (Incidentally, I had no desire to read Tweak because I felt I have known enough addicts and I have heard enough addiction stories to fill a lifetime, but David Sheff’s book made me incredibly curious about his son’s perspective.) As I read Tweak, I wondered when I would meet the golden, beautiful boy that David Sheff wrote about. Instead, Nic’s story began familiarly, akin to many addicts’ stories I’ve previously heard.

I loved drugs. I loved what they did for me. They relieved that terrible sense of isolation I had always felt (N. Sheff).

This passage is precisely what is missing from Beautiful Boy. Nic’s three sentences tell a story of pre-existing conditions that are only being treated by the bewildering, ghastly yet seductive world of addiction—appealing because of pre-existing anguish. As a reader, I need to know this, that Nic is human, not merely someone’s son, not merely the charismatic, beautiful boy.

I commend David Sheff for raising awareness about the appalling effects of drug abuse on the abuser as well as the cumulative effect of drugs abuse on families, communities. His perspective is unique, powerful and well-written, but the nature of memoir imposed limitations upon his perspective, perhaps even stifling some of the scientific insight that he has incorporated. A father cannot take ownership of his son’s descent and simultaneously blame genetics for addiction, while also admitting that his son has free will. Drug users are often categorized as either victims or deserving, but it is my personal belief that they are neither. Drug use is a cry for help that ultimately becomes a slow suicide if not treated before the brain begins to, quite literally, rot away, thereby giving the user less incentive to remain drug-free. As a father, Sheff’s ability to examine his subject is limited, specifically because his subject is (largely) not himself at all, but his son.

The two books, father and son’s, should be sold together, wrapped tightly in cellophane, never to be consumed apart. Perhaps, as a combination-read, Beautiful Boy and Tweak make a complete story, a complete definition of the word addiction. Read together, these two books may expand the consciousness of those who have conflicting views about addiction, thereby creating hope of both prevention and cure of a problem that only seems insurmountable.

Works Cited

Sheff, David. Beautiful Boy. Houghton Mifflin Co , February 26, 2008.

Sheff, Nik. Tweak. Atheneum, 2009.