Beautiful Boy

A Father's Journey through His Son's Meth Addiction

By: David Sheff

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

The #1 New York Times best-selling story of addiction and a father’s love: “A brilliant, harrowing, heartbreaking, fascinating story, full of beautiful moments and hard-won wisdom. This book will save a lot of lives and heal a lot of hearts.”—Anne Lamott

Now a Major Motion Picture Starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet.

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son’s drug addiction. David’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 lied, stole money from his eight-year-old brother, and lived on the streets. With poignant candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs—denial, 3 a.m. phone calls—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.

Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

You can also hear Sheff's son's perspective in his memoir: Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

©2007 David Sheff (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Sheff does not spare himself or anyone else from keen professional scrutiny any more than he was himself spared the pains and joys of watching a loved one struggling with addiction and recovery....This is an honest, hopeful book, coming at a propitious moment in the meth epidemic." ( Publishers Weekly)

Eye Opening

Not having a child with a drug/alcohol problem, I had no idea how agonizing it can be. This story opened my eyes to the pain endured by the family as well as the addict. Thank you David Sheff!

Just great!

Excellent performance. Excellent eye opening story.
Kept my attention. I never got lost or bored.

Impossible to put down

I have been raving about this book for the entire duration of my listening to it. It’s so well written and so fantastically read that it almost soothes the horrifying subject matter. As a father this book snuck up on me on more than one occasion and I found myself staring into blank spaces, my eyes watering, thinking about my beautiful boy and feeling the turmoils of having someone you love like you’ve never loved be in mortal danger. It was impossible to put down and I have been moved beyond words. The performance is an added bonus at this point, but rarely have I heard a book read so well. Listen to it and if you’ve never had a brush with addiction, heed its lessons and wisdom. If you felt what it’s like being addicted or having someone you love succumb to addiction then this book may even give you moments of solace and in both cases deep contemplation. 10/10 on every front

Haunting, but amazingly written.

You don't want to look at it, but you can't stop. Such an amazing read.

Wow! Very moving

Great book! Such a powerful, moving & touching story! I also listened to his son’s books Tweak & We all Fall Down. As a recovering addict, I can appreciate both sides of the struggle! It definitely hit a few delicate places thinking of what I had to have put my parents through. I would suggest this to anyone who has or is going through addiction.

Great Book

This book was very fascinating to me. I have known people with addictions but never thought about it from the perspective of a family member. This is very enlightening and I hope that the author and his whole family are in a better spot now.

Beautiful

If a heartbreaking story can be beautiful this one is. In the epilogue, he mentions a hole in your soul and where did it come from? The answer - it came from God and He is the only one that can fill it. It is a God-sized hole. We can search and search for something to fill it, but nothing we find will fill the void except Jesus. If you have tried everything else, give Him a chance.

Just wow!

I swear I could have wrote this very same story. The transition he makes from a state of panic to learning how to take care of himself first and let his son be responsible for his own life is a conversion we all have to go through as a parent of an addict. It’s the absolute hardest part. This story is raw and a hard read (listen) to at some points as the relapses are gut wrenching, especially if you are in the throws of a relapse story yourself. Very well done!!

Unconditional Love

What a heartbroken and exhausting processes to try to save a child who had serious drug issues. But it is so touched that the parents have never given up to save their child.

A roller coaster read

David Sheff takes readers on the roller coaster of parenting a son addicted to meth. I felt heartbroken, worried, anxious, hopeful, hopeless, angry, and joyful with him as he recounted his experience. I appreciate the amount of research Sheff includes about drug addiction and recovery efforts, honest efforts that are just that... attempts, not cures. I'll defer to other reviewers with relevant experience because they've said what I cannot so beautifully.

I will comment on Anthony Heald as narrator. I generally love anything Heald reads, and for parts of this reading, the energy and emotion he brought to the reading were just perfect. I'm not sure his was the right voice for the entire narrative, though. At some points his voice seemed to not reflect the gravity of the subject.

All in all this was a beautiful, heart wrenching, enlightening read.