Tweak Nic Sheff Analysis

Tweak by Nic Sheff tells the story about a young man about my age that is struggling with an addiction to methamphetamines as well as crack, cocaine, heroin, smoking weed and drinking alcohol since a very young age. He takes the reader through all his encounters and adventures through the world of being a drug addict. His descriptions were so in depth and vivid that I felt as if I was standing by his side the whole story. Even though this story only captures a couple of years of his struggle with addiction and then eventually getting clean he brings you back several times throughout the story. Connecting his present behaviors with things he experienced in the past and growing up, I can see how and why the things he does make him feel certain

In the book Nic would hang out with another addict named Gack who would take things apart such as a stereo or Nic taking apart his computer, but not being able to put it back together. I remember speaking about this in class, its called getting “hung up” in which they have repetitive thoughts and do something for hours on end. Throughout the story Nic was constantly hung up, whether it was having sex with Lauren or Zelda for hours as he described or having the same thoughts of how he’s not good enough to be with Zelda, or his family, or even his friend Spencer. He constantly worried about people liking him and didn’t take the time to actually like himself. All the characters throughout this book that were addicts were constantly paranoid, irritable, self-conscious and always suspicious of other people or police. For instance, Zelda went into a psychosis from taking meth and would attack Nic and yell at him thinking that he was hiding drugs. In class we learned that this kind of behavior happens when drugs are taken in high doses all the time. Also, I learned from class that people who are depressed they use stimulants instead of anti-depressants and anyone that is reading this story can definitely tell early on that Nic is depressed. He has a lot of issues with himself, his family, and relationships with people throughout the book. Towards the end of the book when Nic was in the Safe Passage Center rehab in Arizona he felt bugs crawling all over him as he lay in his bed and at first I thought they were real insects crawling on him. Then I remembered from class when we were talking about “Cocaine Bugs” and how an addict will think there are bugs on them but there isn’t anything actually there. Being that Nic was taking a lot of different