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

by David Sheff

  "What am I supposed to do?"

  "We have some recommendations of other programs." She gives me the names.

  I hang up and call Jace. He says he'll make some calls. Jace calls back with the name of a hospital in the San Fernando Valley where Nic can detox.

  I call the doctor who runs it and arrange for Nic to be admitted. Then I call Z.'s cell phone again and explain what happened. Instead of going to the airport, I say that Nic should go to the hospital. I provide the address. At least he will be safe in a hospital. If he shows up.

  John Lennon sang, "Nobody told me there'd be days like these." Nobody told me there would be days like these. How do people survive them?

  After midnight, Z. drops him off at the hospital. Nic is given medication to begin detoxing. As the nurse explains, he will spend most of the first few days sleeping. The alternative to medication is the well-documented hell of cold turkey, which many addicts cannot endure. Crawling out of their skin, depressed and distraught, feeling hopeless and in acute pain, they will do anything to feel better—they will find drugs.

  I regularly check in with the nurses on the ward, who assure me that he's doing all right. One says: "Given the quantity and variety of drugs in his system, it's a miracle he made it in. I don't think his body could have survived another month."

  His mother and I explore options for where he can go next. Once again I ask Dr. Rawson for advice, and he queries some friends and colleagues. I check on the programs recommended by the supervisor at Hazelden. We ask the doctor who is detoxing Nic for his suggestions. Over the course of these days, Vicki and I each make dozens of telephone calls. We talk to admissions reps and check Web sites. We continue to get contradictory advice. Some programs charge forty thousand dollars a month, but the experts agree that Nic will need many months in treatment this time. We can't afford forty-thousand-dollar months. Some people we speak to are as pushy as used-car salesmen. One place recommended by Hazelden sounds appropriate and is more affordable than many others. Then someone tells me that it is a hardcore program in which punishments for breaking rules include cutting the grass with scissors. This may be useful therapy for some people, but Nic would go crazy. Maybe I'm wrong. I have been wrong about so much.

  At least he's safe for the weekend.

  I talk to another nurse attending to Nic. His blood pressure has been extremely low, though it is better today. He hasn't eaten much since he arrived.

  She asks Nic if he is up for coming to the telephone. He walks to the nurses' station and picks up the phone.

  "Hey, Dad."

  His voice is hardly audible. He sounds extremely, extremely depressed.

  "How's it going?"

  "It's hell."

  "I know."

  "But I'm glad to be here. Thanks. I guess this is what they mean by unconditional love."

  "Just go through this. This is the worst, but it will get better."

  "What should I do next?"

  "We'll talk about it when you're feeling a little better. Your mom and I are working on it."

  In fact, Vicki and I are overwhelmed trying to find a place that will give Nic the best chance. Dr. Rawson continues making calls and sending emails to his colleagues around the country on our behalf. He tells me that "this experience in advising you has made me more convinced that making a selection of programs in the mental health/substance abuse service system is like reading tea leaves."

  Nic calls on the third morning of his detox and asks me to call him back on the pay phone down the hall.

  "It's worse," he says, sounding weak and miserable. I imagine him standing in a hospital hallway—well lit, white—tethered to a pay phone by its metal cord. Slumped over. Supported by the wall.

  "I'm tired. All the fears come in. Confused. What is happening? Why? Why does this keep happening to me?"

  He cries.

  "What is wrong with me? I feel as if my life has been stolen."

  He cries.

  "I can't do this."

  "You can," I say.

  More calls today. Vicki and I have conference calls with the intake people at rehabs around the country, in Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Massachusetts.

  We finally choose one in Santa Fe. I am uncertain. After sifting through what Dr. Rawson calls "a non-system comprised of rumor, marketing bullshit, best guesses and fiscal opportunism," we made the best choice we could, but I'm unsure. Is it the right one? How can anyone know?

  Nic calls again. He says that he should stay in LA and, at most, work in an outpatient program.

  I counter: "I know, and I think that a part of you knows, that you need to go somewhere and stay there until you have done the hard work of figuring out what is wrong and what you can do."

  "Why do you still care?"

  "I still care."

  "Why can't I do it myself? Why do I need to go into another program?"

  "So you can have a future. Last week when I knew that you could die at any moment, I couldn't bear it. I live with the knowledge that you could black out or overdose or go psychotic or do some irrevocable damage or die—it could happen anytime."

  He answers, "I live with it, too."

  Together we weep. It's a startling moment for me. In the trenches these past months, I have held back tears, but now they pour forth. Nic is in the hallway of a hospital somewhere, leaning against a wall, and I am on the kitchen floor, crying.

  Before hanging up, he says, "I cannot believe that this is my life." Then he breathes in and says, "I'll do whatever it takes."

  Early on Tuesday morning, his mother picks him up at the hospital in the valley and drives him directly to the airport, where she convinces a security agent to allow her through the checkpoint so she can escort him to the gate and onto the flight to New Mexico.

  She calls me from the lounge. Nic has boarded the plane and it's backing up from the jetway. I see her standing there with her cell phone to her ear, looking out the window. I see Nic on the plane. I see him as he is—frail, opaque, ill—my beloved son, my beautiful boy.

  "Everything," I say to him.

  "Everything."

  Fortunately there is a beautiful boy.

  Unfortunately he has a terrible disease.

  Fortunately there is love and joy.

  Unfortunately there is pain and misery.

  Fortunately the story is not over.

  The jet pulls away from the gate.

  I hang up the phone.

  ***

  I see a small lilac box with tulips painted on the top and sides. A music box. Daisy's. I open it and a ballerina springs upright. She dances. I inspect the inside of the box. It has small compartments, all empty.

  Like a jumbo assortment of See's candy, the box has hidden layers. I carefully remove the topmost felt tray. Under it, set on black felt like an artifact in a museum, is a plastic syringe. I hold the syringe up and turn it over in my hand, examining it, and then put it aside. I pull up the next felt layer and see, in one of the small compartments, tiny packages the size of small stones, each one wrapped in Kleenex. I pick one up and examine it, unwrap it slowly. It is Nic's tooth. There is blood on the root. I pick up the next small package and unwrap it. Another tooth.

  I wake up.

  I go into the kitchen, where Brutus is flat on the floor, his hind legs splayed out. He cannot move. Karen places a towel under his belly and, using it as a sling, slowly lifts him, helping Brutus stand. His frail hind legs tremble, but he is able to move forward.

  The vet prescribes a new medicine. We cannot contemplate putting him to sleep. Not Brutus. I don't think Daisy, who every evening before bed wraps herself around him, could take it. I don't think Karen could. Or Jasper, who for hours a day would sit in a chair in the garden and throw a tennis ball for Brutus, who would retrieve it, return to Jas, and spit it out onto his lap. None of us could. If we have to, we will. This, too.

  After school, Karen, Jasper, Daisy, and I enter the office of the family therapist. We f
eel enormous trepidation. The kids sit hunched on a leather couch. They squirm in their seats, almost crawling into their sweatshirts like turtles retracting into their shells.

  The therapist is a young man with a trimmed beard and dark eyes. He speaks in a soft, reassuring voice. "Your mom and dad and I met," he says to the kids. "They told me a little about what's going on in your family. They told me about your brother, Nic, and about his addiction. It sounds as if you have had a hard time."

  Jasper and Daisy stare at him, intently listening.

  "It's very scary to have a brother who uses drugs," the thera pist continues. "For a lot of reasons. One of them is that you don't know what will happen. I know you're very worried about him. Do you understand where he is now?"

  "He's in rehab," Jasper says.

  "Do you know what that means?"

  The therapist explains and then tells the kids about other children like them who are in this situation—about how hard it is. "It's normal to feel confused if you have a brother who you love and who you may be afraid of, too."

  The kids eye him sharply.

  The doctor leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. He looks closely at Jasper and Daisy. "I'm going to tell you a word you may not have ever heard before," he says. "The word is ambivalence. It means that it's possible to feel two things at once. It means ... It means that you can love someone and hate them at the same time—or maybe hate what they're doing to your family—and to themselves. It means that you can want to see them very badly and at the same time be very afraid of them."

  The kids look uncomfortable, but less so. Then Jasper speaks. "Everybody is worried about Nic." He looks over at me.

  "You're looking at your dad," the therapist says. "Does he worry about Nic?"

  Jasper nods.

  "Do you worry about your dad? Especially after the hospital? They told me about that, too."

  Jasper looks down and offers a barely observable nod.

  In his office on this wintry evening, the children's initial hesitation is replaced by what feels to Karen and me like a cautious sense of relief. The more we talk, the taller they sit up on the couch. We talk about things that are undeniable and yet have never been adequately acknowledged.

  The therapist says that even though Nic is safe for the moment in rehab, it's probably scary to think about the future. Plus, just because he is safe doesn't mean that everything is fine.

  "After Nic's thefts, whenever something is missing, I go into a state of panic thinking Nic has been in our house again," Karen says.

  "Panic is the exact right word," responds the therapist. "You return to the state when you felt under attack."

  We describe the stack of our friend's newspapers by the fireplace. Karen and I both thought they were papers that Nic would have brought into the house. Before we discussed it, we went into a state of high alert. I didn't want to worry her. She didn't want to upset me. But both of us thought: Nic was here. Will he break in again? It turned out fine, but it took a toll.

  The doctor explains how triggers like the newspapers can return us to a state of panic. He then asks about other triggers, and it dawns on me. Of course.

  "I think it happens when the phone rings," I say.

  "The phone?"

  The kids are staring.

  "The phone, when it rings, brings on the same state of panic. I am always worried that there is news of another crisis. Or it's Nic, and I don't know if he will be sane or high. Or it won't be him, and I'll be disappointed. My body tenses up. Oftentimes during meals or when we're hanging around in the evening, I let the phone ring until the answering service picks it up, because I don't want to deal with whatever might be coming. I think that everyone feels tension. Jasper always asks why I don't answer the phone. I think it makes him nervous."

  Jasper is nodding.

  The doctor says, "And so it's not only something rare and random that comes into your house, like the stack of newspapers. The phone must ring all the time. You must all be in a fairly constant state of worry and tension. That mustn't feel very good." He turns to the kids. "Does that sound accurate?"

  They both nod vigorously.

  It seems to be a profound acknowledgment. To me, the doctor says, "Maybe you can shut off the ringer for periods of time. You can always call people back." He then says: "And now that Nic is in rehab, maybe it would be useful to you and to Nic to establish a time—whenever, once a week or more—when you will speak on the phone. Then you will know. Establishing borders like that can help you both. You both will be freed from a continual state of anx iety that he should or has or hasn't called you. It may help all of you. Your family will know when it's time for you and Nic to talk, and then they can be assured he's all right, but it won't feel like a constant threat."

  I respond, "That's a good idea," but then I admit, "My heart is pounding. The idea of shutting down communication is terrifying."

  "You're not shutting it down, you're making it safer for everyone."

  We leave the session, descend the flight of concrete stairs from the nondescript building, and the children seem to have been unbound. Their cheeks are flushed and their eyes sparkle.

  "What did you think?" Karen asks them.

  Daisy says, "It was—"

  Jasper finishes. "Amazing."

  "It was," Daisy says.

  I begin to monitor my telephone use, shutting off the ringer in the evenings and on weekends. I make a plan to speak to Nic once a week. Small things. They seem enormous.

  It has been three weeks since Nic has been back in rehab. He sounds unwell. As he explains, the initial weeks of his treatment have been devoted to stabilizing him. The week-long detox in the valley wasn't enough to clear his body of all the drugs. Even now, after three weeks, he remains in acute mental and physical pain. He has had intermittent convulsions. Once he was rushed to a local hospital. His body writhes, he is desolate, and he can't sleep. The pain goes on and on—proof, as if I need more, of the deathly grip of the drugs on his body.

  Nic calls on Sunday. He sounds cold and angry, blaming me for where he is. He asks for a plane ticket home. "This was a mistake," he says. "It's a disaster. It's a waste."

  "You have to give it time."

  "Will you or won't you send a plane ticket?"

  "I won't."

  He hangs up on me.

  He calls back the next day to say that he is feeling a little bet ter. He slept soundly last night for the first time since he arrived from LA. He is sorry for yesterday. "I still cannot believe that I relapsed," he says. "I can't believe I did what I did." He tells me he feels guiltier about it than he can say.

  "I'm afraid to say anything at all because I don't know what will happen. I don't want to open you and Karen and the kids up and then disappoint you again."

  He tells me a little about the treatment program's approach, different from the other rehabs. "In my first group, a counselor asked me why I'm here. He asked, 'What's your problem?'

  "I said, 'I'm a drug addict and alcoholic.'

  "He shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'that's how you've been treating your problem. What is your problem? Why are you here?' "

  Fine, I think, but I am past being hopeful. I don't know if he is too far gone, if there is too much damage from the drugs. Even if not, I am unable to allow myself hope.

  Another week. Another. Christmas. New Year's.

  Another week. A month. Nic is safe in rehab, but I remain skeptical.

  It is Thursday. I pick Jasper up from after-school World Beat Band practice, where I sit in and listen from the upper corner of the theater while they play. Jasper plays congas for "Oye Como Va." An eighth-grade boy wails on guitar like Carlos Santana.

  I drive him home and say goodbye to him, Daisy, and Karen. They are going to their cousin's eleventh birthday party. I throw my suitcase in the car and drive in heavy rush-hour traffic to the Oakland airport, where I check in and eat a quick dinner.

  I board a packed Southwest flight. When I arri
ve in Albuquerque, I walk past the gates through the airport. I have a vivid image, Nic's arrival here eight or so weeks ago, after his mother watched the plane take off in LA. I see the terminal through his eyes: Southwest art, Indian rugs, the ENTERING O'KEEFFE COUNTRY sign. In my mind he glances up at Thunderbird Curio and Hacienda New Mexican cuisine. I think, Nic would have been disdainful of being here in this themed terminal if he were in shape to be disdainful of anything.

  Outside, I imagine the driver from the Life Healing Center waiting for Nic with a sign that says NIC SHEFF, but there would have been little doubt who Nic was, the young man off the LA flight, wearing in his colorless face and dull eyes and listless body his months-long binge and the week of torturous detox from a dozen drugs.

  I rent a car. It is supposed to be a nonsmoking car but it smells like cigarettes. Driving on a wide highway, I turn on the radio, and the first thing I hear is the opening riff of "Gimme Shelter."

  I drive for an hour and find my motel and check in. I try to sleep. I would be more at ease if I were here for a convention of dental students practicing their first root canals on me.

  Swimming might calm me down. I leave the room and drive around until I find a mall where I buy a bathing suit. Then I return to the motel and find the pool closed, yellow tape surrounding it as if it were a crime scene.

  In my room I pick up the The New Yorker and read the fiction and Hertzberg and Anthony Lane. I wonder if there are copies of The New Yorker at Nic's rehab? Finally I fall asleep for a while, wake up at eight, and get ready.

  I have not seen Nic since June, right after the ICU. I hardly remember his visit, only the ensuing barrage. The slurred voice, telephone calls, lies, terror, his mother's visit to his apartment, the email from—ostensibly from Joshua Tree, but, as I learned, from Oakland.

  Why am I here? A weekend cannot undo these years of hell, and a weekend cannot turn Nic's life around. Nothing I've done made a difference. Why am I here?

  The therapists in his program counseled him to ask his mother and me to come. If we're trying this one last time, trying one last time to give him another chance, I will do what they tell me. I know that nothing will help, probably nothing will help, but I will do my part. Frankly, and to be completely honest—don't tell anyone, don't tell him—I am also here to see him. I have been afraid, but a cautious and well-guarded place inside me misses him like crazy, misses my son.