' Beautiful Boy: A Father's Addiction

Angel Hardy
Mrs. Vermillion
AP Lang & Comp
27 October 2016
Beautiful Boy Summary
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.
When the book begins, Nic returns home from college for summer break and is greeted by his younger siblings. Later it is brought to attention that after rehab Nic began using again his entire semester of college. Also included in the introduction is the reason why Sheff decided to write this memoir. He says that Beautiful Boy was written to help other families know that they are not alone. He says it not only helps the recovering addicts, but also the families that are experiencing life with an addict.

The book then rewinds back to the very first day of Nic’s life.

Nic was born in San Francisco. Three years later his parents are divorced and his mother had moved to Los Angeles. Nic stayed in San Francisco with his father, for a long time it was just the two of them living together. After a few years David finally fell in love and remarried Nic’s stepmother, Karen. They had a good relationship but Nic felt guilty for loving a woman who was not his mother. As Nic continued to grow up he visited his mother often in Los Angeles and the reoccurring struggle of not wanting to replace his mother with Karen was apparent. When Nic becomes a teenager that’s when the trouble begins. It starts with small problems like coming home smelling like cigarette smoke, and then it turns more serious when he is arrested for possession of marijuana. Once Nic has graduated from high school and it is summer time his problems become serious. He gets into a car accident while intoxicated, he later goes missing for four days only to be found almost dead in an alley way. That night the reader discovers that Nic has done

meth.
For the next portion of the book Sheff talks about what meth is, how it was discovered and the negative affects it has on the human body.
After discovering that Nic had abused meth, his father sends him to a rehab facility. After being in the two-week program he is admitted into a halfway house to continue his recovery. Three days after being in the halfway house Nic goes missing. After a few days Nic returns home and is taken to a rehab facility in the middle of nowhere. There he gets sober and eventually when the program ends and he goes to college. That’s where we began in the introduction. For the rest of the book Nic follows the same pattern: He claims to be sober and off of drugs, he goes to a rehab facility, and then he goes missing for a few days or weeks, and the process continues.