Beautiful Boy

When I first started reading Beautiful Boy by David Sheff I thought it was going to be another cliche book about drug addiction and the pain it causes everyone and everything, and for the first 50 or so pages I thought I was right. After that however I was pleasantly surprised to see that David Sheff was doing his best to present what he and his family went through with his son Nic and his various drug addictions.

I really liked how David brought in Nic's half brother and sister to the story. The amount of pain and anguish Nic caused I thought was best seen in Jasper and Daisy. They are so young and have only the slightest grasp of what Nic is going through and yet their pain is so adult. It astonished me what those two went through at such young ages and I am truly intrigued to see how those two will address drugs and alcohol when they reach the age where it becomes prevalent. Through out the book David kept returning to Jasper and Daisy and how they were handling the situation and it was their story and reactions that I held on to the most. I was devastated for both Jasper and Daisy when Nic stole from them. I couldn't imagine what it felt like to have someone whom they admired and trusted so much violate some of their most important boundaries.

What David went through as a father also really stuck me. He tried everything possible to help Nic and every attempt he made failed. At some point I would have given up, but some how he managed to find more strength and more resources to fight back. Yet, despite my admiration for him I recognize how his son's addiction began to consume and pollute his life. He was becoming so detached from everything going on around him and he was refusing to recognize that his son's addiction was not something to pity his son for. At times I would get so frustrated when he would say things like "poor Nic". I wanted to scream at him that his son did this to himself. He was the catalyst to his own addiction. I just wish that David could have figured out so much earlier on in order to save himself from much of the pain and suffering he had put himself through. Yet, at the same time I can somewhat understand his desire to help and try to save his son.

It amazes me that the government isn't doing more in the research of how to treat an addiction to meth. It is becoming more and more of a prevalent drug in areas across the US and yet no one is making a valiant effort in trying to prevent and treat its addiction. It's as though it is some taboo topic that no one can talk about.

I found myself agreeing the David when he said he didn't know how to talk to other people about what was going on with his son. Society makes it so difficult for people who are family members of a drug addict to openly talk about it and get support. There is this whole idea that in some shape or form the family is responsible for their loved one's addiction. This idea drives me crazy. Everyone deserves support when going through some sort of crisis regardless of what it is. I was so angry that one of the few outlets that David had was AA meetings. It made me even angrier that there was nothing Jasper and Daisy. No one wants to talk about it, yet its happening all over to all sorts of people. Why is that some issues are made to be more important than others? Sorry for my rant but it doesn't make sense to me. David, Jasper and Daisy deserve all the support and help they need in order to aid them in moving through this difficult point in their life. They shouldn't have to keep their pain a secret because their loved one is doing drugs. It just irks me that some forms of pain are perfectly acceptable in society while others are not.