So I’m traveling around with my son, Nic, talking about addiction. It’s a tour to promote our books, but it feels more like a continuation of a family weekend in rehab. Sometimes I look over at Nic and just melt. Everyday I’m reminded of how close I came to losing him—how close he came to losing his life. I’ve been on other book tours, but this is incomparable: being with Nic, meeting people whose lives have been, in many cases, devastated by addiction.
Indeed, many of the people who are coming to our readings bring with them their own stories. I’m humbled by them. Yesterday a man approached when I arrived at Starbucks at the library at George Washington University. He told me that his son didn’t make it; his child overdosed and died. I’ve heard about similar unthinkable catastrophes from other parents – and also from husbands and wives and children and partners and friends and others — people whose loved ones died. Each time I’m struck with a blow to my gut. Nic is only alive – I only have my son alive because of the luck of the draw.
As this kind, open, brave father reminded me, You can do everything right. You can do everything you can for the person you love. And sometimes they don’t make it. It’s the nature of disease. It’s like cancer, he said. Sometimes people pull through and sometimes they don’t. All we can do is try. If the disease claims them, all we can do is cry and talk and hold onto one another.
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Hello David,
First of all I want to tell you how happy I am that your son is still alive. Nothing else that happens to you in this world will be as wonderful as knowing that your son is still alive.
I also belong to the Parent Advisory Board of this organization, Partnership For A Drug Free America, having recently joined.
My book is called I Am Your Disease (The Many Faces of Addiction) and tells the stories by 40 parents (myself included) of the heartbreak and unbelievable sorrow that we experience when we lose a child.
Not only have we lost a child, but we’ve lost a child to an “unacceptable disease.” As the father who approached you in Starbucks so cogently pointed out…You can do everything right, you can do everything for the person you love and sometimes they don’t make it.
The stories in my book are all about those of us who did everything that we were told to do to raise drug-free children. We gave it our all and we still could not save our child.
Please know that I speak for every parent in my book when I say that we are so happy to know that your son is alive and you are able to continue with a wonderful father-son relationship. Please treasure it and perhaps think of those of us who have been denied this second chance. I applaud you for speaking out.
Sheryl
David: I am also on the Parent Advisory Board of PDFA. I certainly have gone through the guilt of wondering if my husband and I “caused” our son’s addiction and mental illness complications. Although I understand AlAnon’s position on the 3 Cs–You didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it and you can’t control it–I think another AlAnon teaching is even more powerful: Acceptance is the answer.
When I accepted that our parenting and behavior, especially my husband’s (which was similar to yours in your book), was the central trauma in our son’s life, and that I do bear some guilt for “causing” our son’s response, which was to numb the pain, it relieved some of the crushing guilt. I had so much pride in my parenting because I did it with such love and vigilance. But I did not handle my husband’s infidelity with grace. I fell apart all over my kids. (And I still fall apart over it today sometimes; infidelity has a PTSD element for all involved.)
However, what’s done is done. At least I can reassure my older son (who is not an addict), with 4 children, that he is a better parent than we ever were–even though that hurt like heck to admit. I can’t undo the past, but I’m grateful I can witness a better present and try to stay out of the way of making something worse. motherwarriors.blogspot.com
I am a parent with a son addicted to meth. He started when he was 16, cleaned up at 19, and recently relapsed at 21. He spent 2-1/2 years building his life, starting a career, and has lost it all to drugs. This is our second time around, and I have decided to turn this experience into something that will hopefully someday help my son, and more importantly others. Living this experience has been a blessing and curse at the same time. The first time around it led me on a spiritual path that has grounded me. This time I feel an extreme passion to make a difference in the arena of drug addiction. I am in the research stages of starting an organization to help fund rehabilitation services to the addict, outreach to loved ones, and research to help counter-balance meth addiction with treatment. I look forward to reading your book, and hopefully get the chance to meet you in Petaluma, CA on April 3. I would love to share my ideas with you, and in the process learn from your experiences. Much love to you and your family on this journey.
Hello, David. I just finished reading your book and need to thank you, but unable to find adequate words. You found all the words for what my family and I have gone through with our beautiful boy, whose name also happens to be David. He is presently recovering in a nursing home after jumping from the top of a parking ramp in a drug- and alchohol-induced stupor. He shattered his spine, his ankles, collapsed his lungs, and ruptured his spleen. It is a miracle he is alive and his physical recovery thus far has been even more miraculous. Still, I ask God to “heal” him, just as you asked for Nic to be healed. As he wavered between worlds in the critical care unit, I was so desolate that I went to the chapel and begged God, too, for some relief–a sign, if you will–for my own comfort and my parents’. In my supplication, I had placed my hand on the Bible lying there, and beneath it I found these words, under the page heading “The Inaccessibility of Wisdom” in the Book of Job:
Then his flesh shall become
soft
as a boy’s;
he shall be again as in the
days
of his youth.
He shall pray and God will
favor
him;
he shall see God’s face
with rejoicing.
He shall sing before men and
say,
“I sinned and did wrong,
yet he has not punished me
accordingly.
He delivered my soul from
passing to the pit,
and I behold the light of
life.”
Job 33:25-28
I offer up my gratitude and continued prayers, too, for you and your son. Believe in miracles.
Hi David,
I am also part of the Parents Advisory Board with the PDFA and recently met you and your son Nic at a Borders book signing in Naperville, IL.
Your book affected me deeply and I have recommended it to everyone I know. It certainly stirred up a lot of emotion in me…another parent of a recovering heroin addict.
You expressed so beautifully the love and dreams you held for your beautiful boy and honestly addressed the guilt, fear,sorrow and nothing short of agony; having a child you love so completely and unconditionally struggle with drug abuse and dependency. This life threatening disease needs to be talked about openly and often.
Too many precious children are dying. I have been to countless funerals here in an affluent suburb of Chicago - seeing parents distraught and inconsolable after their darling kids became victims of this epidemic. It is heartbreaking and a sorrowful cloud that is over our land. More must be done to combat this insidious foe.
Thank you for getting the message out there to the people.
Meeting you and Nic was an honor and I admire the courage each of you have.
Wishing you and Nic much success.
Lea
Dear David,
Thank you very much for your book! I absorbed every word that you wrote and had a hard time putting it down. I have a 16 year old son and have my own story, of course, and even though our family situation is different, the feelings of guilt, confusion, worry, denial, etc. a parent experiences with a drug addicted child - hit very close to home. I appreciated your openness and honesty - it made your story more real and so relateable! Thank you!
My husband and I were aware a year ago that our son was experimenting with pot, heard a rumor that he was also doing acid and Ecstasy, but we had no idea how much, or that it would get to be as bad as it did over the course of the next two seasons. He was so out of control - arrested numerous times, was truant from school, and just plain defiant at home. I don’t have to tell you that it was a nightmare! What happened to our sweet, outgoing, loving boy?
Well, I am happy to say that we do have him back, thanks to the courts. After being on house arrest for nearly two months, being arrested at our home (he was high on heroin) and sent to the juvenile detention center, and then having to face a judge who was ready to sentence him to a year in jail, my son chose to go into rehab, which was the other option. Strange how this all worked out because our son has been clean for nearly two months now AND he hasn’t even received any rehab treatment yet, other than AA (which I know is what has been his lifeline).
Oh…….and I am almost finished with Nic’s book! I HAD to read his story. I wanted to know what it’s like to be addicted - the trials, the tribulations, the struggles, everything so I could understand it better. He did such a wonderful job - so raw, so very honest. I commend him on his bravery, for that must have been so difficult to write. Would you thank him for me? What an awesome boy you have!
Many blessings………and thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Kathy
I wanted to respond both to David Sheff and to the other California woman who mentioned that she is attempting to make a difference in the drug addiction arena. My concern is that we adopt policies and regulations for rehab facilities so that they will provide the appropriate care to assist in turning people’s lives around. I believe that many rehab centers are not doing an adequate job, understanding, of course, that it is a difficult endeavor.
Did I read something about David Sheff writing another book to address some of these issues? I am certain there are many others like me who can offer suggestions. We can also work to promote those facilities that are doing the best work and share our frustration with others.
Dear David,
I just finished your book and wanted you to know that your words really hit home with me. The similarities between our son and yours were incredible right down to the tights with the underwear over them. As of this writing, my oldest son is still using meth and is back on the streets again. He is 29 years old. He has given up his career, his children (ages 2 & 5), his wife (who also uses) but I refuse to give up on him. Your book fed my hopes and I thank you for that. We also have a 23 year old son who is struggling with alcohol & meth so we have a double whammy. I too have attended Alanon but find much strength from the Families Anonymous website. I continue to read and research the subject of addiction and alcoholism in hopes of finding some way to help our sons. Thanking you for sharing your journey. Linda Kallas
David,
I just wanted to let you know what an impact your book has had on me. I am an addict going on thirteen years clean and also a mother of a 4yr old girl and a six month old boy. I am also a wife to my jr.high sweetheart (who is also an addict going on thirteen years clean). I also grew up in the bay, first in san carlos and then moved to walnut creek when I was in 7th grade and where I discovered drugs, most of all meth. My father, a prior stagehand four Bill Grahm (before he died), and also for the union local 76 making movies, discovered cocaine and then meth, which led to my parents divorce when I was seven. Though my older brother went down a path of robbing houses and, well, just getting in trouble, I choose to do drugs with my dad. A whole lot of them! My dad as been clean for 11 yrs and I have a real relationship with him now (that I am 30) - but alt east it wasn’t too late! So I just want to thank you for telling your story and making me realize one important thing, (which I have let my mother know!) that no matter what, I would have choosen this path no matter what she or anyone would have done. But the end result is the best, I have my husband that I have been with for 17yrs and married for 9 and two beautiful, healthy children, my dad, my life!
Thank you,
Erika Garrett
I’m not on any boards or committees and I’m a fairly lazy parent really so all that I have is an opinion as a parent and an addict/alcoholic (though not practising these days). Fortunately, my child seems to learn from my mistakes, as I relay them to her, rather than follow my pattern. Apart from having an entirely different upbringing and life to me however, which seems to be working, she has something that I have never had, restraint. She’s a sensational person now, an absolute delight, but who knows how she will go ultimately?
I have recently read both David & Nic Sheff’s books. The books are both extremely distressing, amusing, tragic and hopeful, much like the meetings that hopefully Nic Sheff is still attending. As I guess David Sheff could advise any parent from experience, there seems to be virtually nothing that can be done to protect kids from temptation, whether it’s grog or drugs or both.
Quite interestingly to me, as an addict, alcoholic and parent (only practising one of those job clinchers today), is the way certain people genuinely seem to have the ‘personality’ to become a dedicated user. …I mean in addition to socio-economical risk factors or horrific breakdowns in families or the frequent ‘precursors’ attributed to the formation of addiction in a person. I was a ‘naughty’ kid from day one. I was drunk at 6, had a brief lull in the career and then hit it again at about 13-14 and only stopped about 8 years ago. Though most of my family knew about my previous heroin use and rehab, I hid the extent of my drinking from nearly everyone. I had no restraint and absolutely no regard for authority. If the truth be told, I probably still have a slight deficit in all those areas today.
I have siblings who were also a bit naughty as kids (in varying degrees though none quite as outstanding as me) but who are apparently not addicts. One sister has never tried any drug in her life and at 33 and a successful worldly woman, that’s a fairly impressive feat. She hits the grog, however, but likely is not an alcoholic. I have another sister who tried pot in Amsterdam once, and that was it. I have another brother who is, what I would consider for the foreseeable future, a committed drug addict but who seems to function, intermittently and in a fairly debauched manner. Another brother is a very successful man and a good man but has certainly been known to imbibe every now and then in a bit of coke, and likely a few other ‘party pills’ too. He has never succumbed to addiction. Well, not yet anyway but he just doesn’t seem to have the ‘nature’. He may even have put the brakes on already and dropped out of that ’social habit’. I have another sister who, despite being a successful professional woman also, is very troubled and recently told me she started taking speed at school when she was about 13-14, which is my daughter’s current age. All of my siblings and I had what could only be described as a vile and traumatic upbringing but only 1, me, is an outed addict/alcoholic. Bar the brother who is a disaster, the others all seem to cope with their lot and have not developed habits of addiction, though some have had a few near misses. That baffles me (and I have to admit in my sober days, amuses me). I accept it completely but it is amazing that people of the same blood have such different reactions to similar incidences.
I do not know why I had no restraint early on and developed my current afflictions. I probably lean toward believing that addicts are born, particularly where there’s a family history. Insight doesn’t help me and it certainly didn’t as a practising alcoholic, when I knew for sure that I was an alcoholic (though not fully comprehending the extent of my disease or conduct). I personally had to get to the point where I couldn’t live with it, and couldn’t live without it, as I’ve heard from many an alcoholic before me. I had to bottom out and no amount of begging or pleading or shame that I could have brought on myself prior to that defining moment when I stopped could have stopped me earlier. I genuinely had to go to the depths of hell, relatively for me. I try to think now if anyone could have helped me or if I would have listened to anyone or if I’d been forced into rehab - would I have stopped? I seriously believe I would not have stayed stopped and lived sober.
I have made no bones with my daughter about my alcoholism. She saw it as a small child and though I fortunately did not hurt her directly or physically and she always was cherished and adored, she saw that I was hurting myself. She knew that I drank and that it was a massive problem for me (from comments she made after I’d stopped – she realised the significance of my drinking quite before me). She also knows that I just could not stop without AA and that I likely cannot stay stopped, or live relatively sanely, without AA still.
I do not want my child, however, to view all alcohol consumption as problematic. (On the other hand, I do want her to view all drug consumption as out of the questions and extremely problematic but that’s difficult to enforce, of course). There is a fine balance in trying to educate her that not all people will be lunatics like her mother on grog and that some people do drink and enjoy it, and that’s it. I tell her that if she too should suffer the affliction that I have, be grateful that at least I’ve left her something by which to remember me, then there is help. It is an absolute bastard of an affliction but it is not hopeless, if you want help. …And if you have it, there will come a time when you will want help!
I also know that should she be an addict/alcoholic, nothing that I say or do now (short of locking her in a stainless steel room, which has been mooted) will stop that onset. However, my grandfather, not an alcoholic, would always say that if a person seems to be an alcoholic or a problem drinker (he would say, if a person finds him/herself repeatedly doing something they wouldn’t ordinarily do were they not drunk…), they must get to AA and they can never drink again. Those two things stuck with me through my drinking – the AA and never drinking again. I knew that my brakes were broken and I knew the time would come where I would have to seek help or die (and it was a close call). I also knew that once I did articulate my problem to anyone, that would be it. The game would be up and I’d never be able to touch grog again. And so it is.
I have seen through my time in AA that those words of my grandfather that were accepted and ingrained as a part of me really, or as a part of my belief system, created an ‘out’ for me as an alcoholic. I dreaded the thought of living without alcohol and those words were a double edged sword for some time. Yet, in the rooms of AA where I see so many desperately stumped souls trying to get a grip of the idea that it is a permanent life-long commitment to abstinence and to AA (for me, the AA part at least), and that you simply can never touch grog again, I thank God that my grandfather said those words and said them without any sense of passing judgement.
So I guess after my War & Peace ramble, the best thing that I can think of to give a child is to reinforce self worth, of course, but be a parent (or grandparent!) who is open and honest enough to say that some people will have a problem with alcohol (and/or drugs, I guess), they cannot help it while they are drinking but they are not hopeless. Freely speaking about addiction (not as a highlight or badge of honour mind you), in a non-judgemental way, seems to remove the taboo somewhat and at least, for this alcoholic, instilled an option about whether to live decently or die in a ditch.
I am amazed at your compassion and love for your son in his battle with drug addiction. Your son has an “unacceptable disease”, so do others in the same condition. Family and friends suffer greatly over the impact this makes on their lives. If only there was more information and funding.
Okay, why after all of this did you have to slam lung cancer—so “other people” were to blame for their illnesses also? Its not only drug addicts who “do it to themselves”? Do you have any idea how many people who have lung cancer have never smoked, or like you and your drug use, quit 20 to 30 to 40 years ago. “Other cancers weren’t caused by the person”, how do you know, no one else does. So, great book, made you look really good, and really irresponsible and shallow.
Dear David,
I thank you for writing Beautiful Boy, and applaud both you and your son. The overwhelming amount of courage it takes to stand unprotected in center stage, while sharing those most painful and disturbingly dark periods of your lives could only be fully understood by one living such a nightmare. I, too, am the mother of a beautiful boy. We, like so many others, have a horrific story to tell. I can honestly say we’ve been to hell and back, and never gave up hope. I’m one of the lucky ones, such as yourself. My son has two years of being opiate-free. Even so, the first thought that comes to mind each morning that I wake…”let’s get through one more day.”
I continue to find it difficult that there remain individuals who cannot comprehend that addiction is a disease. I find it a struggle to engage those same individuals, for their lack of compassion is one of which I find confusing. Does anyone choose diabetes, cancer, heart disease? No child looks into his parent’s eyes and says, “I’m going to be a drug addict.” It just does not happen. Do we understand all the reasons why some children fall into this dark hole? Of course not. So why not give credence to what we do know, and that is drug addiction is a disease. It’s victims are suffering both physiologically as well as psychologically.
Thank you,
Julia
HI David, Im a parent on the Parent Advisory board for the Partnership for a drug free America.
I want to commend you for letting people know that the disease of addiction effects every aspect of a family and little by little the rest of the family becomes just as sick as the addict.
It wasnt until after my son died did i realize how sick i was and got the help i desperately needed…
Families need to know they are not alone and that addiction can be treatable,,,,
We also need to all work together to force better adolescent treatment,.
Karen Ventimiglia