Beautiful Boy & Tweak

Beautiful Boy

'An important book...moving, timely and startlingly beautiful' Richard Branson.

David Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view; a real-time chronicle of a son's shocking descent into substance abuse and his gradual emergence into hope.

Before meth, Sheff's son Nic was an accomplished athlete, top 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 candour, Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs, the denial, the three a.m. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the attempts at rehab and, finally, the way past addiction. He shows us that whatever an addict's fate, the rest of the family must care for one another too, lest they become addicted to addiction.

Crystal meth is acknowledged to be the world's most addictive and dangerous drug - wreaking permanent brain damage faster than any other readily available narcotic. But Nic's story is not just about meth. His addiction caused the same damage that any addiction can. His story, and his father's, is that of any family struggling to support an addict.

"Moving, painfully honest, very revealing, it tells a story which just never gets told and which is extraordinarily important." Rosie Boycott.

David Sheffwork has appeared in a number of publications including the New Your Times, Outside, Rolling Stone, Wired and Fortune. His piece for the New York Times Magazine 'My Addicted Son' received an award from the American Psychological Association for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addiction

Beautiful Boy
Simon and Schuster
Author: David Sheff
ISBN: 9780061374050
Price: $34.95


Two books, two different perspectives: a father and son tell the story of a boy's addiction to crystal meth and how it almost tore their family apart.

Tweak

'Read these gripping books in tandem, and you begin to understand how love can miss its mark and spiral towards tragedy' Oprah Magazine.

Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and ecstasy and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and pull his life back together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer to convince him otherwise.

In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery from the fastest growing drug used in Australia. He paints an extraordinary picture of a person at odds with his past with his family and himself.