- ISBN13: 9781416972198
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What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry ! and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic.
Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.
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 addict! ion with a painful oath of silence, but David Sheff opens up p! ersonal 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 CallananFrom Adonis and images of St. Sebastian to James Dean and Calvin Klein models, beautiful boys have been quietly admired since the beginning of time. While most agree that women have been treated and depicted as sex objects, Germaine Greer's sensational thesis is that the erotic charge of male imagery has been rigorously repressed throughout history. Men and women alike have been blind to the sensuality and flirtatiousness found in images of boys, as well as to the many depictions of female bodies based on the juvenile male-from Michelangelo's female figures to waif like supermodels.
This iconic ideal of male physical beauty is revealed in hundreds of dazzling images by the world's greatest artists and photographers. The Kritios boy, Caravaggio's Love Triumphant,! Larry Clark's Oklahoma City, Nijinsky in "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune," Cellini's Narcissus, Donatello's David, Thomas Eakins' young swimmers, and many other examples, provide striking evidence that the models of today- with their wide shoulders and narrow hips-echo the boyish ideal.
Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. 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 put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California 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. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and w! ith himself. It's a harrowing portraitâ€"but not one without h! ope.
