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

by David Sheff

  Here is one more.

  Please God heal Nic. Please God heal Nic.

  The descent is quick. Nic shows up high at work and loses his job. His phone is disconnected because he does not pay his bill. He deserts every real friend. Saddest, he has deserted his best friend and sponsor, Randy.

  In one message he says that he and his girlfriend have sold their clothes to pay for food. I don't know how they have paid their rent. I don't know how they will pay next month's rent, but soon, unless they have a benefactor or are dealing drugs, they will be homeless.

  Today Vicki cannot stop herself, and she drives from the west side of town to his apartment in Hollywood. She wants to see for herself. She wants to see if he is alive.

  I pretend that I am not waiting by the phone to hear from her.

  She parks her car and apprehensively walks into the apartment building. She pulls open the screen and knocks on the door. There is no answer. The window shades are down. She knocks again. No answer. She knocks again. The door opens a crack. Then wider. The place is filthy—squalor. There is a pool of brown water on the floor. Trash everywhere. Nic, blocking the flood of daylight with his hands, shakily steps into view. Behind him, his girlfriend does, too. It is a scene familiar to me, but new to his mother. Vicki has never seen Nic like this: gaunt, white, nearly yellow, trembling limbs, sunken black circles around vacant eyes.

  Z.'s legs are bleeding. When she notices that her legs are uncovered and that Vicki is staring, Z. stammers, "A light bulb broke on the floor. We were cleaning it up."

  Nic tells his familiar lies: "We had to go through this. We're done now. We're getting sober."

  He asks his mother to leave and to not come back.

  Vicki calls and tells me. She sounds like I have felt on many occasions before. She sounds furious and wretched and horrified, emotion so overwhelming that she cannot yet cry.

  ***

  A week goes by.

  It is Sunday and I am driving Daisy to the city to meet a friend and her mother at Washington Square. We meet up with them and walk through the park, from where we watch the Columbus Day Parade. A float is filled with a dozen girls dressed as Queen Isabella. Nic is here. He is six years old. Queen Isabellas float by. This is our neighborhood. Nic is one of the children running toward the climbing structure, climbing up to the tip top, watching the parade from that crow's nest, waving at the queens.

  I drive Daisy and her giggly friend across town to a birthday party being held at a ceramics studio. The girls, strapped into the backseat, play a game inspired by the picture book Fortunately by Remy Charlip.

  The book reads:

  Fortunately Ned was invited to a surprise party.

  Unfortunately it was a thousand miles away.

  Fortunately a friend loaned Ned an airplane.

  Unfortunately the motor exploded.

  Fortunately there was a parachute on the plane.

  Unfortunately there was a hole in the parachute.

  "Fortunately she had a very delicious sandwich," says Daisy's friend in the girls' game.

  And Daisy's turn:

  "Unfortunately she dropped it on the dirty street and along came a slobbery dog, who ate it up."

  "Fortunately he threw up the sandwich and it was as good as new."

  More giggling.

  "Unfortunately a little fuzzy hamster scurried in and grabbed it and took it with him and then he disappeared into a crack in the wall and was never seen from again."

  My own version plays in my head.

  Fortunately I have a son, my beautiful boy.

  Unfortunately he is a drug addict.

  Fortunately he is in recovery.

  Unfortunately he relapses.

  Fortunately he is in recovery again.

  Unfortunately he relapses.

  Fortunately he is in recovery again.

  Unfortunately he relapses.

  Fortunately he is not dead.

  22

  Another week.

  Vicki, with whom I speak daily, says that she is numb. I am, too. It's not that I don't worry about Nic—I think about him all the time—but for the moment I am not incapacitated.

  Is this where parents wind up?

  I walk past more people on the streets, this time in San Rafael. I walk past them and step over them, people alone and abandoned, and, when I do, as always, I think, Where are their parents. But this time I wonder, Is this the answer? Am I becoming one of them—a parent who has accepted defeat? My agonizing has not helped Nic in the slightest.

  I am not pretending that this isn't happening. I am doing all that I can do.

  I wait.

  A downward spiral.

  It's a degenerative disease. I imagine the downward spiral.

  No, I am not numb. I wish I were. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed.

  I brace myself.

  Randy continues to call Nic and leave messages on his dead cell phone. Randy was Nic's lifeline.

  Using Z.'s phone, which is still working, Nic calls and leaves more messages. "I just want you to know we're safe. We're going to meetings. I'm getting sober."

  He claims that the relapse was a one-shot, three-day mistake and he's fine. But the longer he talks, the more it becomes obvious that his voice is the voice of Nic on something.

  I wait.

  It's like watching from afar, perhaps through binoculars with imperfect lenses, the moments before a train wreck. All of us who love him commiserate. Karen and I. Vicki and I. Randy. We all know. And yet there's nothing we can do. I call Nic back. "Nic, don't forget how dangerous it is when you aren't attending meetings," I say. "Don't forget when you listen to the logic of your brain when it's under the influence."

  In recovery, working with Randy, Nic was the one who explained the insidiousness to me: "A using addict cannot trust his own brain—it lies, says, 'You can have one drink, a joint, a single line, just one.' " It tells him, "I have moved beyond my sponsor." It says, "I don't require the obsessive and vigilant recovery program I needed when I was emerging from the relapse." It says, "I am happier and more complete than I have ever been." It says, "I am independent, alive." And so Nic said he couldn't trust his own brain and needed to rely on Randy, meetings, the program, and prayer—yes, prayer—to go forward.

  Nic, you have come so far.

  Let me quote you: "Everything I have will be gone if I don't stay with the program."

  Two days later, on Wednesday, Nic calls up slurring and asks for rent money. No. He says that he knew I would say no. He saved it for the end of the conversation, after, "I love you so much. I'm safe. We really fucked up but we're going to be fine now. I just took a little something to help me come down from the meth and coke and smack and..."

  Vicki says no, too.

  Now it is Friday. Nothing on Saturday. Nothing on Sunday. Nothing until Monday when an email arrives.

  "hey pop, we're in the desert. Z is doing a commercial, out by joshua tree ... my phone doesn't get any reception here and I just borrowed this computer for a second from some guy on the set ... sorry ... this came up really suddenly ... anyway, i'll call you when i find a phone that works ... it's hot, hot here and boring ... z just doing wardrobe and i'm writing in the shade here ... don't fret ... i may have some exciting news too ... love ya ... nic"

  Joshua Tree.

  A respite. An oasis. Maybe Nic will stop on his own. Maybe he'll be OK.

  Nothing for two more days, but Nic is in the desert, writing in the shade. There are drugs in the desert, too.

  At night, Karen and I switch off reading to the kids. We are nearing the end of Harry Potter. Professor Dumbledore died. He is dead. More than one of the children we know cried for hours when they read this—Albus Dumbledore, Harry's protector with whom these children grew up, is dead. Evil is winning, and I feel weakened by the ceaseless battle.

  On Thursday, Jasper has a soccer game after school. Daisy has swimming. Karen and I divide the driving.

  I have found a quiet place in
a corner of the clubroom near the pool to write. Looking up, out the window through the slats of shutters, I see a dark form curve up and break the water, followed by a pair of kicking feet: Daisy doing her laps. The coach, poised and tanned and lithe, a former All-American swimmer who has taught all three of our children, crouches at the end of the lane, encouraging Daisy and the other swimmers. I lose sight of her among the lines of bodies in their blue suits until she returns back down the lane in the opposite direction, her powerful arms pulling in arching freestyle strokes. I remember when it was her big brother Nic in the water, his lean dolphin body cutting through the pool.

  "Hey, you, mister, let's skedaddle."

  It is Daisy, dripping after a shower, wrapped in a beach towel.

  There is no news.

  Some of the panic in which I lived during these crises seems to have lifted. I worry, but I am not sick with worry. I'm getting better. I'm letting go. I'm in abject denial.

  It must be like a soldier in a trench during a bombing raid. I've shut down every nonessential emotion—worry, fear—concentrat ing every neuron in my new brain on the moment in order to stay alive.

  I am in a silent war against an enemy as pernicious and omnipresent as evil. Evil? I don't believe in evil any more than I believe in God. But at the same time I know this: only Satan himself could have designed a disease that has self-deception as a symptom, so that its victims deny they are afflicted, and will not seek treatment, and will vilify those on the outside who see what's happening.

  After dinner, Jasper asks me to quiz him on math and his words of the week. Then he and I read a Mad magazine together.

  In bed, I grab one of the novels on the tottering stack on the nighttable. I will never get through all the books. I'm so tired at night that I read a page, maybe two, and fall asleep. Karen joins me.

  A page. Two pages. I am asleep.

  The telephone rings. I ignore it. In my half-consciousness I have decided that it's a serviceman we called for an estimate on some repairs. I think, It will wait until morning.

  The phone rings again. I'll get the messages tomorrow.

  No, Karen says, you had better check.

  The first call is Nic's godfather. Nic just called him and left a message. "He's in Oakland." My friend's voice is in a state of alarm. "He says he's in trouble and needs help. I don't know what to do."

  My heart pounds.

  The next message is from Vicki. Nic called her, too, leaving a similar message. "I lied about Joshua Tree because I didn't want you to worry that I was in Oakland. I'm sober. Please, we're in trouble. We need plane tickets back to LA." He tells a convoluted story about how they got there, but the bottom line is that he and Z. are at the home of a crack addict in Oakland who is out of his mind and they have to get out.

  Nic is in Oakland.

  Brutus stiffly follows me upstairs, shuffling his weary paws along the concrete. I fill the teakettle and place it on a flame on the stove.

  I return Vicki's call. She is unsure what to do—whether or not to pay for a plane ticket. I understand, but, no, I say. If it were me, I would not help unless he wants to go into rehab. Then maybe.

  I hang up.

  I call my friend. He is calmer than when he left the message. He says, "Listen," and plays the message on his answering machine over the telephone. We hear the slur in Nic's voice. "I need help. I can't call my dad. I don't know what to do, please give me a call." He leaves Z.'s cell phone number.

  "It's so sad," my friend says. "Part of me wants to drive to Oakland to get him and part of me wants to wring his neck."

  Once again, Nic is here and he is high. For some reason, I'm aberrantly calm as I think, If he is here, what might he do? Might he come to our house? What do I do if he does? Would he go back to Karen's parents' like that time Nancy found him in the downstairs bedroom? Would he break in again?

  Karen emerges from our bedroom. She asks, "Do you think he might go back to Nancy and Don's?"

  She is worried about the same thing. He probably wouldn't go there, but, would he? We debate whether we should call them. It would worry them. But it would be worse not to warn them and then to have Nic show up. We call them.

  Where else might he go?

  The next day, Nic leaves another message for his godfather and one for his mother, this time saying that the girlfriend of the crack addict with whom they were staying showed up and gave Nic and Z. money to fly home.

  I'm working at the Corte Madera library, a stack of books at my side.

  I have brought my laptop and I'm writing and writing, an attempt to contain something that is fast (once again) spiraling out of control.

  The phone is on vibrate because of the library and it starts its mad shaking and rattling as if possessed. I pick it up from the table so the noise doesn't disturb anyone. On the screen, in sickly green letters, I see that it's Nic's girlfriend's phone.

  I have no desire to hear more lies. I turn it off.

  Later, as I am driving to pick up the kids from school, I listen to the message. Nic says that he and Z. are driving back from Joshua Tree and are finally in cell phone range. He says, word for word: "Hey, Pop, we're driving back from Joshua Tree and we're finally in cell phone range again..."

  I am struck not just by the lie, but by its intricacy. He could have said, "I'm back in LA." He could have checked in without saying any more than hello. But he thought through the original lie and built on it, bejeweling it with detail so that I would never question it. And I would not have if I didn't already know it was a lie. By now I have heard about the web of lies by addicts. "Substance abusers lie about everything, and usually do an awesome job of it," Stephen King once wrote. "It's the Liar's Disease." Nic once told me, quoting an AA platitude, "An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie about it. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it." Part of me is convinced that he actually believes that he will find it for you.

  I listen to the message a few times. I want to remember it.

  Did he forget that he called his mother and his godfather and told them that he was in desperate peril in Oakland? After everything, does he assume that my dear friend would not call me if he was worried about Nic, if Nic was desperately in danger in an Oakland crack house? Does he not know by now that his mother, with whom I have ridden this hellish rollercoaster, will of course call to check in with me to talk about what, if anything, we should do? And not only about what to do. Just to talk to the other person who loves Nic the way she does.

  The message continues. He's not slurring. He sounds fine. He says he misses and loves me.

  23

  "Hey, Papa, it's me, Nic. I just found out that you know the truth of what happened."

  I check my messages. Nic called. Again. There's a slurriness. He has talked to Vicki, and he knows that I know that he was in Oakland, not Joshua Tree, and he tries to cover his tracks. "I just didn't want to worry you," he says. "And also I didn't want to be pressured to come see you while I was in the Bay Area and I had no idea this guy was going to turn out to be such a psycho. And neither did Z. We got out of there the best as we could ... I'm safe now ... Anyway, I'm sorry I lied to you."

  I am in the living room sitting on the couch. Something catches my eye: a pile of newspapers on the floor. On top is an SF Weekly. I look closer. A Bay Guardian and a flyer from Amoeba Records, his favorite store. I stare at them and it sinks in. No.

  I ask Karen if they are hers. No, aren't they yours?

  Nic broke in again. I'm certain.

  Karen is certain.

  We are certain.

  No.

  Our hearts pound. We start looking around the house.

  Karen stops and asks if they could have been left by a friend who was visiting from New York, staying with us last weekend. Could they be his? I call him. The newspapers are his.

  We are paranoid and crazy. It's not only the addict who becomes paranoid and crazy.

  I haven't returned Nic's calls because I ju
st can't face talking to him now, not until he is sober. Off every drug. Not "I'm just using Klonopin to get off the meth," or "just a Valium to help me come down."

  I love him and always will. But I cannot deal with someone who lies to me. I know that sober and clear-headed and in his right mind and in recovery Nic would not lie to me. In a way, I am grateful for the blatancy. It has taken away one thin layer of my uncertainty. Normally I am in some hellish purgatory, not knowing what is true and what isn't, whether he is using or not, but now I know.

  I have, above my desk, photographs leaning against books on a shelf. There's a recent picture of Karen and another of her when she was a child, a ruminative, dark-complexioned girl with short hair and a striped sailor shirt on a beach somewhere. She looks like Daisy, or, rather, Daisy, with her sparkling gaze and dark eyes and hair, looks like her. There are also pictures of Daisy. In one she wears moccasins and blue underwear and is closely inspecting Moondog's tolerant face. There's a picture of Jasper when he was an infant in Karen's arms and Jasper dressed up in a red flannel loden coat, silk purple raja pants, a knitted green flannel hat with gold tassels and fluffy pompoms, and, on his feet, genie shoes embroidered with gold thread with curled-up, pointy tips. There are team pictures of Daisy and Jasper posed in their swim goggles. There are pictures of Nic. In one he is about ten, wearing jeans, a blue zippered sweatshirt and blue sneakers. His hands are in his pockets and he looks at the camera with a gentle smile. There is a more recent picture of Nic, too. A broad smile, in baggy trunks and bare-chested, from when he met us in Hawaii. It's my son and my friend Nic in recovery, and he is all right.