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Beautiful Boy Report Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction is a best selling book written by a famous journalist David Sheff. After the book was published in 2008, Starbucks Company chose Beautiful Boy to be one of the books that can be bought in its coffee shops. Beautiful Boy is a memoir written by David Sheff, who is a father of a substance-addicted son Nic. This book shows the perspective of a parent who struggles with son’s addiction and wants to bring him back to the family, along with father’s desire to protect family from destructive behavior and influence of drug-addicted son. Beautiful Boy was released in 2008 and approximately at the same time another book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines was published. The second book is written by Nic Sheff, the addicted son who gives reader different perspective on the same events that were described by his father. These two books are unique in their own way, since they give two different perspectives on the same, very widespread and so difficult issue - the struggle with substance abuse. David Sheff starts the story of his family with Nic’s birth and goes all the way long to the present days when his son had survived several years of drug abuse, rehabilitations and relapses. Sheff confesses that his son started to use different kinds of drugs when he was very young. At the age of 11 he would try alcohol and some pot. “In early May, I pick Nic up after school one day …When he climbs into a car I smell cigarette smoke. I lecture him and he promises not to do it again. Next Friday after school…I am packing an overnight bag for him and look for a sweater in his backpack. I do not find a sweater, but instead discover a small bag of marijuana.” (Sheff, 200... ... middle of paper ... ...k from semester in New York, Sheff asks a question about how one can explain a child that his older and beloved brother steals money from him. Beautiful Boy is a well-written book in a sense that despite the heavy topic, it is easily read. This book is very personal and full of emotional load. This is a story, told by a father of a drug-addicted son, and this story does not differ from many other on the similar topic. Nevertheless, it can be concluded that such stories are the most honest, since stories about substance abuse are very often the same. In my personal opinion, this book is very precious for people who experience or had experienced the same problem as David Sheff, especially when it is read in tandem with Nic Sheff’s Tweak. These two books may give a good insight on the issue of drug abuse, and revel the perceptions of both family and addicted person.
The author uses his knowledge of the human brain to emphasize the importance of “Endorphins” when growing up and how the lack of the chemicals “in infancy and early childhood,[creates a greater need] for external sources” (289) such as drugs. Along with his scientific evidence, Mate also uses many of his patients traumatic childhood experiences such as having “dishwashing liquid poured down his throat . . . and was tied to a chair in a dark room to control to his hyperactivity” (289). These patients help create an image for the readers to be able to understand the feelings and the pain addict 's often face in their childhood, that leaves them feeling abandoned and neglected from the rest of the world. Mate even analysis the fact that addict 's can come from home where there is no abuse and the parents try their best to provide a loving and nurturing home. The problem in families like this is often a parent is the one who faced traumatic experience as a child and are not able to transmit the proper love to their child, because they lack the feeling themselves. The author uses the strategy of looking at both the child and the parent experiences to show that the root problem originates from the same outcome, wanting to feel “unconditionally [loved and be] fully accepted even when most ornery”
Throughout David Sheff’s book, he incorporates detailed diction in describing his environment, past, and the people around him as to allow the reader to be able to imagine what he had seen during this course of his life. As the father of a drug addict, Sheff had also had his own experience with drugs, in which he describes this experience with words and phrases such as “I heard cacophonous music like a calliope”, “[The brain’s neurotransmitters flood with dopamine], which spray like bullets from a gangster’s gun” and “I felt
...lliams wrote in The Cocaine Kids was accurate. Instead of just writing more facts and statistics about these teenagers and cocaine, he told a story. He wrote something that more individuals can read and relate too. I believe the Williams successfully brings value and importance to these drug dealers lives. Williams shows drug dealing in the inner city in a very humane way. Their lives are closed to almost all outsiders because of the fact they are involved with illegal drugs. But after reading this book it showed me that even though they live a very difficult and dangerous way of life, they are not as different to us outsiders then we think. They too, have to continuously make tough and valuable decision to live and be successful within society. These dealers are just kids who had little time to be young and are trying to survive in a violent and corrupt world.
Throughout “Chasing the Scream” many intriguing stories are told from individuals involved in the drug war, those on the outside of the drug war, and stories about those who got abused by the drug war. Addiction has many social causes that address drug use and the different effects that it has on different people. In our previous history we would see a tremendous amount of individuals able to work and live satisfying lives after consuming a drug. After the Harrison Act, drugs were abolished all at once, but it lead to human desperation so instead of improving our society, we are often the reason to the problem. We constantly look at addicts as the bad guys when other individuals are often the reasons and influences to someone’s decision in
...ilies’. Michael Wamsley and Janelle Hornsby were almost killed themselves because they driven on the highway after addicting meth; moreover, they were still high many hours, the police came and rescued them. Janelle’s mother thought the behavior that her daughter did is such a waste of time. If Wamsley and Janelle haven't addict to meth in the party, they will never face the accident; still, their family will never lose hope on their child.
It was 3 a.m., and I could hear the argument downstairs. My parents had to do this at 3 a.m.? I got up, walked around for a minute, and went back to bed- I had school the next day. This became an increasingly common occurrence, almost every other day the fall and winter of junior year. The argument had been more or less the same for the last month, centering around my dad's alcoholism and family's money troubles.
National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The Nagative consequences of Marijuana Use." Marijuana (Contemporary Issues Companion). Tardiff, Joseph, ed. Farmington Hills: Greenhaven Press, 2008. 34-44. Print
Aside from the violence and costly attempts of control that accompany drug trade, there are severe social implications of the U.S war on drugs. One of the major social topics today is that of Marijuana use and punishment in America. Since 1937, over 26 million Americans have been arrested for Marijuana use. [2] The effects and harms are still debated today, yet many people serve time in jails and prisons, waiting to be released with criminal record that will follow them for the rest of their life. Further, those incarcerated are represented by a disproportionate amount ...
Dr. Carl Hart had a very rocky childhood and through his own determination to not repeat the past has gotten to where he is now in life. He comes from a broken family plagued by domestic violence, divorce, and a lack of support while he was growing up. Dr. Hart’s views on; social support, addiction and the physiological effects on the brain, factors to take into account when assessing drug abusers, drug policies influencing discrimination, and decriminalizing drug use are well articulated through his book High Life; in which enabled the audience to have raw reactions to his personal views.
Drug in the American Society is a book written by Eric Goode. This book, as the title indicates, is about drugs in the American Society. It is especially about the misuse of most drugs, licit or illicit, such us alcohol, marijuana and more. The author wrote this book to give an explanation of the use of different drugs. He wrote a first edition and decided to write this second edition due to critic and also as he mentioned in the preface “there are several reason for these changes. First, the reality of the drug scene has changed substantially in the past dozen or so years. Second much more information has been accumulated about drug use. And third, I’m not the same person I was in 1972.”(vii). The main idea of this book is to inform readers about drugs and their reality. In the book, Goode argued that the effect of a drug is dependent on the societal context in which it is taken. Thus, in one society a particular drug may be a depressant, and in another it may be a stimulant.
Drugs cause an overall disturbance in a subjects’ physiological, psychological and emotional health. “At the individual level, drug abuse creates health hazards for the user, affecting the educational and general development of youths in particular” (“Fresh Challenge”). In youth specifically, drug abuse can be triggered by factors such as: a parent’s abusive behavior, poor social skills, family history of alcoholism or substance abuse, the divorce of parents or guardians, poverty, the death of a loved one, or even because they are being bullied at school (“Drugs, brains, and behavior”) .
Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through His Son’s Addiction is a memoir written by David Sheff explaining the experience he and his family went through dealing with their drug addicted son.
Beautiful Boy: A father’s Journey Though His Son’s Addiction, is a non-fictional story written by David Sheff describing the struggles he and his family go through because of the onset of his son’s, Nic, addiction to methamphetamine. The story starts out when Nic is a young boy living with his mother, Vicki, and father, David in San Francisco. David and Vicki are wonderful parents. They are both active in Nic’s life; they read to him, take him to the San Francisco Zoo, and when he is of age, attends preschool. Nic is happy and smart boy, but his parent’s relationship is struggling. Vicki moves to Los Angeles and remarries, David gets primary custody of Nic and Vicki gets Nic for holidays and summer vacation. David eventually remarries, Karen,
In Los Angeles, Calif., a youth was walking along a downtown street after inhaling a marijuana cigarette. For many addicts, merely a portion of a “reefer” is enough to induce intoxication. Suddenly, for no reason, he decided that someone had threatened to kill him and that his life at that very moment was in danger. Wildly he looked about him. The only person in sight was an aged bootblack. Drug-crazed nerve centers conjured the innocent old shoe-shiner into a destroying monster. Mad with fright, the addict hurried to his room and got a gun. He killed the old man, and then, later, babbled his grief over what had been wanton, uncontrolled murder.
Before being capable of fighting the use of drugs and alchol, one must come to an understanding of why some people use drugs. The decision to ultimately use drugs is influenced mainly in childhood. Whether in a poor ?ghetto? neighborhood, or in a middle-class suburb, all children are vulnerable to the abuse of drugs. Most high-risk children are effected by personal and family circumstances (Falco 51). If a child?s parents are substance abusers, then it is a fairly safe prediction that the child will abuse drugs later in life. Also, early-life experiments with drugs greatly increases the chance of abuse later in life. Academic problems, and rebellious, anti-social behavior in elementary school are also linked to drug problems, in addition to truancy, delinquency, and ear...