Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

by David Sheff

  Vicki and I talk. We are both relieved to hear that Nic has agreed to go back to LA, to Randy—to the program. However, we're both shell-shocked, unable or unwilling to accept that everything may be all right again. It's all too precarious.

  In the evening, Vicki calls. Nic, who had enough money left for a taxi to the airport and a plane ticket, made it back to LA. She picked him up at the airport and dropped him off at his apartment, where his roommate welcomed Nic home with a pat on the back.

  Nic immediately retreated to his bedroom, where he fell asleep. When I call, Ted tells me that Nic is sleeping it off. "Detoxing isn't any fun, but he has to go through it," he says. "There's nothing you can do. Just pray."

  Nic calls in the morning. His voice is hoarse. When I ask how he feels, he gruffly responds, "How do you think?" He recounts his departure from San Francisco. "I did what Randy told me to do," he says. "I prayed. I just kept saying, 'Please help me.' I kept repeating it. When I was getting ready to go, April saw me and freaked out. She grabbed on to my leg and was crying and screaming that I couldn't leave. But if I stayed, we'd both die. I told her, but it didn't help." He cries. "I fucked up bad."

  Over the following days I try to be optimistic, but I'm in a con fused frenzy. I still act as if I'm OK around Daisy and Jasper, but I break down with Karen.

  I go to an Al-Anon meeting in a room at a church in Corte Madera. I am shaking, unable to restrain myself, and when it's my turn, I blurt out a reconstruction of the past couple weeks. As I'm speaking in a rush of tears and panic, I think, Someone else is talking. This is not my life. Finally, drained, I say, "I don't know how all you people in this room survive this." And I cry. So do many of the others.

  After the meeting, as I help fold and stack the metal chairs, a woman whom I have never met comes up to me and hugs me, and I horrify myself by weeping in her arms. "Keep coming back," she says.

  Sometimes it startles me that life goes on, but it does, inexorably. Jasper comes into my office. He wears short flannel pajamas and furry slippers. Daisy, her slept-on hair messy, has on a T-shirt and rainbow-striped pants and she carries Uni, her stuffed unicorn. Then Karen, the kids, and I make waffles. After eating, Jasper and Daisy launch a game of hide-and-seek. Jasper is it, and Daisy zooms down the hallway. He calls, "Ready or not," and hunts her down. He discovers her, coiled like a cat inside the same basket she always hides in. Jasper tips the basket and spills her out onto the concrete floor and then trips over her sprawled body and falls on top of her. They laugh like hyenas. Daisy uncoils and leaps up, making a run for it, with Jasper in hot pursuit. They careen by us and dive into Nic's vacant bedroom, designated base in spite of the bad memories that seem permanently soaked into the walls.

  Next they dress and go outside and throw a lacrosse ball back and forth. Within minutes, as always, they lose the ball. The garden has a mystifying power of attraction for balls: lacrosse balls, tennis balls, soccer balls, footballs, baseballs—and not only balls, but paper gliders, model rockets, Frisbees. They look under bushes and hedges for a while but the ball is gone into the garden's black hole. The kids give up and sit on the gravel, from where we overhear their handclapping game: "Lemonade, crunchy ice. Beat it once, beat it twice." Next we hear Jasper say, "Do you think that Nic looks like Bob Dylan?" The other night, we watched a video that had in it a performance by Dylan in Greenwich Village at twenty or so years old.

  Daisy doesn't respond directly, but asks, "Do you know why that guy does drugs?"

  Jasper says, "He thinks it makes him feel better."

  "They don't. They make him feel all sad and bad."

  Jasper responds, "I don't think he wants to do them, but he can't help it. It's like in cartoons when some character has a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil whispers into Nicky's ear and sometimes it gets too loud so he has to listen to him. The angel is there, too," Jasper continues, "but he talks softer and Nic can't hear him."

  In the evening Nic reports that Randy almost had to drag him out of bed and onto a bicycle. "I felt like I wanted to die," he says, "but Randy didn't take no for an answer. He said he would pick me up, so I got ready. Randy was there and I got on my bike and felt like shit, didn't think I could pedal down the block, never mind up the coast, but then I felt the wind, and the memory in my body took over and we rode for a while." There is some life back in Nic's voice, and I am left with a hopeful image: Nic on his bike in the Southern California sunshine, riding along the beach.

  On the weekend, when Nic calls again, he is eager to talk. He expresses astonishment that he relapsed. "I was sober for eighteen months," he says. "I got cocky. It's this trick of addiction. You think, My life isn't unmanageable, I'm doing fine. You lose your humbleness. You think you're smart enough to handle it." He admits that he is ashamed—mortified—about this relapse and claims that he is redoubling his efforts. "I've been going to two meetings a day," he says. "I have to start the steps all over." Of course I am relieved (once again) and hopeful (once again). I'm always evaluating: What's different this time? Is it different? Indeed, he is making progress, the kind you learn to measure day by day. Randy helps him get a new job. Together they begin to work the twelve steps again. Each day before or after work, they go on long bike rides.

  At home in Inverness, Karen and I work on an analogous re covery. Through Al-Anon and the therapist Karen and I continue to see on occasion, we understand the ways that our lives have become unmanageable, too. Mine has. My well-being has become dependent on Nic's. When he is using, I'm in turmoil; when he's not, I'm OK, but the relief is tenuous. The therapist says that parents of kids on drugs often get a form of posttraumatic stress syndrome made worse by the recurring nature of addiction. For soldiers back from battle, the sniper fire and bombs are in their heads. For parents of an addict, a new barrage can come at any moment. We try to guard against it. We pretend that everything is all right. But we live with a time bomb. It is debilitating to be dependent on another's moods and decisions and actions. I bristle when I hear the word codependent, because it's such a cliché of self-help books, but I have become codependent with Nic—codependent on his well-being for mine. How can a parent not be codependent on a child's health or lack of it? But there must be an alternative, because this is no way to live. I have come to learn that my worry about Nic doesn't help him, and it harms Jasper, Daisy, Karen—and me.

  A month passes. Two. In June, I am going to LA to conduct an interview. I ask Nic if he wants to meet me for dinner.

  I pick him up in front of his apartment. We hug when we see each other. Stepping back, I look at him and try to take in what is there. By now I have learned enough to know that at some point, addicts, especially meth addicts, don't recover—at least for a long, long time. Some never recover. The physical, never mind the mental, debilitation can be permanent. But Nic's eyes are light-filled brown, and his body seems strong again. He's young enough to bounce back, or at least it looks as if he has. His laugh seems easy and honest. But I have observed this transformation before.

  We take a walk and make small talk—the upcoming election, stuff like that. Movies are always safe. "I want to apologize," he says, but his voice catches and he is silent. For the moment it seems to be impossible for him. Maybe there is too much to apologize for.

  We meet again the next evening and I accompany him to an AA meeting. While drinking tepid coffee from paper cups, we introduce ourselves. "I'm Nic, a drug addict and alcoholic," he says. When it's my turn, I say, "I'm David, father of an addict and alcoholic, here to support my son."

  The meeting's speaker says that he has been in recovery for a year. There is applause. He tells stories about the impact on his life. Last week, he says, he found himself alone with a friend's girlfriend, to whom he had been attracted for years. She began to come on to him. Any other time in his life he would have been elated and wouldn't have thought twice about sleeping with her, but he started to kiss her and then stopped himself. He said, "I can't do this," and he left. O
utside her apartment building, walking home, he began crying uncontrollably. He says, "It dawned on me. I have gotten my morals back." Nic and I look at each other with ... what? Tentativeness. And for the first time in a long time, tenderness.

  I am continuously reminded that nothing is easy for Nic. My heart goes out to him. I want to do something to help, but there's nothing to be done. I want him to acknowledge the traumatic past and promise that it will never happen again. He can't. When we talk, in fact, I realize that Nic has discovered the bitterest irony of early sobriety. Your reward for your hard work in recovery is that you come headlong into the pain that you were trying to get away from with drugs. He says that he sometimes feels optimistic, but other times he is depressed and desolate. "Sometimes I don't think I can make it," he says. He feels overwhelmed by this relapse. "How could I have fucked up so badly?" he asks. "I can't believe I did it. I almost lost everything. I don't think I can face starting over again."

  Nic admits that sometimes he fantasizes about relapsing. He dreams about it. Again. Always. His dreams are vivid and ghastly. He feels at once the abhorrence and the seduction of drugs. He can taste them. He tastes crystal, smells it, feels the needle pierce his skin, feels the drug coming on, and the dream turns into a nightmare because he cannot stop. He wakes up panting, in a sweat.

  I know that being sober is more difficult for Nic than I can comprehend. I feel sympathy and pride for his hard work. When I get angry about the past—the lies, the break-ins, the betrayals—I restrain myself from saying anything or even reacting. It does no good. I think it was in New York that Nic and I saw The Royal Tenenbaums together. Nico—her voice pained—sings Jackson Browne's "These Days." I hear her sing the haunting lyric: "Don't confront me with my failures. I have not forgotten them." I have to remind myself that if Nic's relapses horrify me, it's worse for him. I suffer, Vicki suffers, Karen suffers, Jasper and Daisy suffer, my parents suffer, Karen's suffer, others who love Nic suffer, but he suffers more. "Don't confront me with my failures. I have not forgotten them."

  Today was particularly tough, Nic says when he calls. Indeed, he sounds depleted. His car broke down on his way to an interview for a job he's excited about. As a result, he missed the interview. I always worry if these normal, everyday frustrations will be too much for him, but he and Randy went riding. They rode for hours and talked about the program, AA, the twelve steps, and how difficult it is to open up to the world, but how much there is to gain when you do. Sobriety is only the beginning, and is the only beginning.

  Though they have spoken on the telephone with Nic, Karen, Jasper, and Daisy have not seen him since the relapse. We keep trying to explain it to Jasper and Daisy. "He has a disease" doesn't begin to comfort them. It's a wholly unsatisfying, confusing explanation. From their perspective, the symptoms of a disease are things like coughing, fevers, or a sore throat. The closest they get to understanding is Jasper's image of the devil and the angel, competing for Nic's soul. Regardless, Daisy and Jasper miss him. Karen and I are unwilling to let Nic visit us in Inverness. We need more time. Nic seems to understand. We are not ready to have him come home again—not after this last time. Not after the stolen checks, the car chase, the traumatic break-ins at our and our friends' homes, the thefts, the trauma of not knowing—imagining him in the trunk of a car driving east across the country, Sacramento, Reno, Billings, Montana. But in late summer, we are taking a vacation to Molokai, Hawaii, staying in tent cabins above a beach, and Karen suggests that we use some frequent-flier miles and invite Nic to join us. Finally she's ready to see him. For us both, it feels safer to meet on neutral territory, and a vacation is a less complicated time to try to begin to reunite.

  ***

  On the day of Nic's arrival, the four of us drive to the single-runway airport on Molokai to meet him. As always, the reunion combines excitement with intense nervousness.

  "Daisy, you have a stuffy little nose, missypants," Nic gushes when he sees her, picking Daisy up in a bear hug and spinning in a circle. "It's so good to see you, little boinky.

  "And you, mister," he says, squatting down to meet Jasper's full eyes. "I have missed you more than the sun misses the moon at night." He squeezes him too.

  During the long drive to the camp, there is some diffidence and awkwardness, but then Jasper asks for a PJ story, and we are back in safe territory.

  Nic begins: "PJ Fumblebumble, London's greatest detective, awoke." He uses a British accent that borrows pitch and tenor from the narrator of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. "As everybody knows, PJ Fumblebumble is the greatest detective in all of London. However, for those of you who have spent your whole life living in a cave or in a hut buried beneath snow, I'll just say that if anything were to ever go amiss for you—a missing parakeet, a burglar in the bedroom, no syrup for your pancakes—there's only one man that you need bother to call. That man, as you probably guessed, is the one, the only, Inspector PJ Fumblebumble. Children want to be him, men are fiercely jealous of him, and women swoon at the very mention of his name."

  Nic has been telling installments of these stories about PJ and Lady Penelope for years. The kids love them. "The man is tall and thin," Nic continues, "lanky and lean like a lollipop stick with legs and a carefully groomed handlebar mustache. His nose is enormous and hooked. It can follow a scent as well as a common bloodhound. His ears are equally keen and oversized. His hair is beginning to gray and fall out on top, while his eyes require the aid of round, wire-rimmed spectacles. Dashing and bold, he is aging with distinction. The man's hands are large, with fingers of knotted rope. His Adam's apple is round and protrudes marvelously."

  The PJ story takes most of the ride to the campsite. After the conclusion—PJ arrests the vile Professor Julian "Poopy Shoes" Pipsqueak—the kids update Nic about school and their friends.

  "Tasha has gotten meaner and she always copies me," Daisy is saying. "She ignores Richard, who follows her around. It makes him cry."

  "The snobby little prig," answers Nic, still British from PJ.

  We drive along and gaze out on red-earth vistas. In a moment, Jasper quietly asks: "Nic, are you going to use drugs anymore?"

  "No way," Nic says. "I know you worry, but I'll be all right."

  They are quiet. We stare at the red clay and spy the first glimpse of the breaking surf.

  At the beachside camp, the five of us ride rental bikes, play in the sand, and swim together in the waves. Karen reads aloud Treasure Island in the shade of palm trees.

  One afternoon we go to town for ice cream, to a shop with chairs with twisted wire backs and legs. The assortment of flavors is uniquely Hawaiian: sweet potato, green tea, and macadamia nut swirl.

  It is striking to me how our dual realities once again blur. It's probably a vestigial survival mechanism. Now, instead of recalling the overwhelming calamity and evil, I am swept up in the loveliness of the children here together and the natural beauty. I feel as if we are all being washed clean by the ocean and warm tropical breeze. Feeling hopeful about Nic's future, I can tuck the darkness of his addiction away—not to forget it, but I set it aside—and meanwhile appreciate the sublimity. A sunset, the clear green water, poetry in the music that plays on CDs in the car—Lennon singing "Julia," Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks." For the moment, evil is at bay.

  The night is filled with the sounds of crickets and mice skittering across the wood floor. From their tent with three single beds, we also can hear Nic reading to Jasper and Daisy. He has picked up The Witches where he left off more than two years ago.

  After goodbyes at the airport, we board separate jets, Nic for LA, us for San Francisco.

  A week later, I am with Jasper in Point Reyes Station, where we pick up the mail. There's a stack of bills, letters from their school with a schedule for the new year, and a letter for Jasper—from Nic. Jasper opens the envelope carefully. He unfolds the letter and holds it in his hands, reading aloud. In his neat script on paper torn out of a notebook, Nic writes, "I'm looking for a way to say I'
m sorry more than with just the meaninglessness of those two words. I also know that this money can never replace all that I stole from you in terms of the fear and worry and craziness that I brought to your young life. The truth is, I don't know how to say I'm sorry. I love you, but that has never changed. I care about you, but I always have. I'm proud of you, but none of that makes it any better. I guess what I can offer you is this: As you're growing up, whenever you need me—to talk or just whatever—I'll be able to be there for you now. That is something that I could never promise you before. I will be here for you. I will live, and build a life, and be someone that you can depend on. I hope that means more than this stupid note and these eight dollar bills."

  PART V

  Never any knowing

  JOEL

  How exactly is this going to work tonight?

  (As Mierzwiak talks, the room colors start to fade. Mierzwiak's tone of voice is also affected; it becomes dry and monotonous.)

  MIERZWIAK

  We'll start with your most recent memories and go backwards—There is an emotional core to each of our memories—As we eradicate this core, it starts its degradation process—By the time you wake up in the morning, all memories we have targeted will have withered and disappeared. Like a dream upon waking.

  JOEL

  Is there any sort of risk of brain damage?

  mierzwiak

  Well, technically, the procedure itself is brain damage, but on par with a heavy night of drinking. Nothing you'll ever miss.

  —CHARLIE KAUFMAN,

  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

  20

  My article "My Addicted Son" appears in the New York Times Magazine in February. Nic and I both hear from friends and strangers, sharing the feedback. Both of us are encouraged, because it seems as if our family's story has touched many people—and, according to some, helped them, especially those who have been through some version of this, or who are going through it now.