Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy
A father's journey through his son's meth addiction
Author: David Sheff
Read by: Anthony Heald
Nonfiction
9 dics (approx 11 1/2 hours)

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

Before Meth, Sheff's son, Nic, was a varsity athlete, honor 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 the haunting candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs, the attempts at rehabilitation, and, at last, 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. 

*personal notes:  Once I started reading this book it was very hard to put down.  Its the father telling the story of what he and the family went through with his son's meth addiction.  He battles with his inner-self on what he could've done or what should've been done to avoid his son's addiction.  Partly in denial for a time, wanting to believe his son was just experimenting with weed as a teenager it leads into a full blown meth addiction that in this books makes you realize that the addicted is not the only one who's life is destroyed but the addiction takes over the whole family with their constant worrying on where he is, if he is alive, the battle to help him get better which leads to the realization that the only thing that can be done is nothing until the addicted  choose to help themselves.  The family struggles when the younger siblings don't understand what is happening to their older brother, and suffer when they have parents that always mentally or physically there for them because they are so consumed with trying to get Nic better and away from his addiction.