Pubdate: Tue, 4 Mar 2008
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: E-1
Copyright: 2008 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact:  http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Justin Berton
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Marijuana - California)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)

ADDICTION - A FATHER-SON STORY

One of the unsettling themes in David Sheff's memoir, "Beautiful 
Boy," a wrenching tale about his son's drug addiction, is that even 
though Sheff was among what he calls the "first wave" of 
self-conscious parents who were hip enough to forge honest 
relationships with their kids, he was woefully unprepared for the 
vagaries of meth.

Sheff, 52, who lives in Inverness, and his ex-wife, Vicki, were 
decidedly attentive parents - "probably over attentive" as Sheff 
writes - and their well-adjusted children were supposed to glide into 
adulthood.

But David's then-teenage son Nic took a detour. Despite his cultured, 
well-to-do Marin County upbringing, during which he shared dinners 
with writers like Armistead Maupin, Nic developed a methamphetamine 
addiction that led to heroin use. By 22, he was emaciated and roaming 
the Tenderloin in search of a fix.

"I was blindsided," Sheff said at his home recently. "I thought I'd 
protected Nic with the openness. I thought I'd know if there was 
something going on with him, and I didn't. Everyone's generation 
probably feels like they're parenting in a better way. But this is 
definitely not what we expected."

The latest unexpected turn: Last week, Sheff embarked on a national 
book tour with Nic, now 25, who's been sober for two years and lives 
in Savannah, Ga. The younger Sheff has his own memoir to promote, 
"Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines." After the father wrote about 
his son's slide in a November 2005 New York Times Magazine article, 
an editor from Simon & Schuster contacted Nic, who was then 
freelancing for the online magazine Nerve.

"They thought it'd be interesting if I told my side of the story," 
Nic said, while on a visit to his father's home. "So I just kept 
writing chapters and submitting them and they kept liking them. Then 
they offered me the book deal."

The result is a sign of our confessional times: father-and-son 
memoirs, mutually promoted and both written to give hope to 
individuals and families who suffer the same lot. ("Beautiful Boy" 
will see an extra marketing push, as it has been selected by 
Starbucks as part of its book retail program.)

"The books have allowed us to continue the conversation," David Sheff 
said, as he looked across the kitchen table at his son. "These books 
make it pretty hard to pretend this never happened, that it wasn't as 
horrible and destructive as it was."

Nic Sheff snuck his first drink during a family snowboarding trip to 
Lake Tahoe when he was 11. But, unlike the other kids who squirmed at 
the taste of the hard liquor, Nic felt compelled to finish the glass 
until he passed out. It was a compulsive streak that followed him 
through high school, when he started smoking pot and got his first 
taste of meth. When he learned the rush was more powerful when he 
injected it, "that was that," he said. And in college when friends 
were calling it quits at 2 a.m., Nic was just getting started.

"It's like this hunger," Nic said. "It's this emptiness inside me 
that just opens up so wide. It feels very chemical. It feels like 
something in my brain has opened up and sort of needs to be fed."

Although there's no current data on the number of meth addicts in the 
United States, counselors have witnessed a dramatic increase in the 
number of addicts seeking help, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse 
and Mental Health Services Administration. From 1995-2005, the number 
of addicts seeking admissions for meth treatment increased 
three-fold, from 47,695 to 152,368. In 2004, an estimated 12 million 
people older than 12 had used meth at least once in their lifetime, 
and 1.4 million people had used meth during the past year.

The drug's popularity, the elder Sheff writes, had coincided with 
Nic's coming of age. Once reserved for biker gangs and truckers, meth 
has become ultra-potent and, according to law enforcement officers 
Sheff interviewed, has spread across the country and "marched up the 
socioeconomic ladder."

"When I told Nic about my own drug use, I thought I had some 
credibility," said the elder Sheff, who writes for publications like 
Rolling Stone and Playboy. In 1980, he interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Raising Nic, he openly discussed his own dabbling with pot and 
cocaine and even a try of crystal meth, hoping those stories of 
experimentation (and moderation) would be instructive. He divorced 
Nic's mother when the boy was 5. The two shared a love for writing, 
movies and art. On a visit to David's parents' home in Arizona, the 
teenage son felt comfortable enough to light a joint in front of his father.

"I accept the joint," David writes, "thinking - rationalizing - that 
it's not unlike a father in a previous generation sharing a beer with 
his seventeen-year-old son, a harmless bonding moment. ...  We talk 
and laugh and the tension between us melts."

"I totally believe parents should talk to their kids about drugs," 
David said. "I totally believe that educating them in every way is 
really important. But on the other hand, I've learned it's not as 
simple as that. Things that enter into kids' decisions (to take 
drugs) are so much more complicated."

"It is complex," Nic added. "When I was little, we were so close and 
spent so much time together and had common interests. ... When I did 
start using hard drugs I was still talking to (my dad) about it, and 
who knows, maybe that little piece (of communication) could have 
saved my life. It probably helped me get into treatment a little faster."

When the book agent called Nic, he'd been clean for 10 months. Not 
long after the advance arrived, he was using meth, coke and heroin 
again. And again, he went into rehab. He says therapy and books by 
authors who were "willing to expose their inner worlds," such as 
William S. Burroughs and Dennis Cooper, have helped him get through 
his troubles.

Nic describes the rush that meth gave him as a feeling of supreme 
confidence, an hourslong state of achieved bliss. Yet when the drug 
evaporated from his system, and the money had run out, he felt an 
aching low. To rid himself of the habit, he went through weeks of 
detox, waiting for his body to return to a state of normalcy.

David said he began writing about Nic's dependence "just to get my 
head around it and wrestle with it." Yet he approached writing about 
his son with "a lot of trepidation and only after a lot of 
conversations" with his ex-wife and Nic.

When the New York Times article appeared, there were many friends and 
relatives who knew and adored Nic but were unaware of the depths to 
which he'd sunk: He stole money from his kid brother, broke into his 
mother's home and got arrested for failing to appear in court for a 
marijuana possession charge.

"I had many sleepless nights, wondering if this was the thing to do," 
David said. "But each time I thought it through, I came down on the 
side of being open and honest. There's a cliche: You're only as sick 
as your secrets." Reading both books is a reminder of how memory can 
serve its master. In David's book, it's a devastating moment when he 
realizes Nic stole $8 from his younger brother's piggy bank to buy 
drugs. The dramatic scene is artfully teased out for all that it 
symbolizes: The reality that his son's behavior had reached a 
pathetic low, and the ease with which Nic can inflict pain on his family.

In Nic's book, a raw, almost stream-of-consciousness journal that 
includes scenes of shooting dope in a high school friend's Sea Cliff 
mansion, the money incident gets a two-sentence mention. He awakes to 
the sound of his brother's tears, and recalls the theft as $5. "I got 
out of bed and started to pack," he writes. "I didn't remember taking 
the money, but I knew I had."

Still, the memoirs are undeniably related. Both men use Lennon's 
lyrics in the preface: The elder Sheff quotes the songwriter's 
"Beautiful Boy." "When you cross the street/ Take my hand"; and the 
son chooses from "How?" "How can I go forward when I don't which way 
I'm facing?"

After the tour, Nic will return to Savannah to finish a 
semi-autobiographical novel about a kid from Los Angeles who cleans 
up his life after he moves to the deep South.

"Writing 'Tweak,' I wanted to show that this is where the power 
lies," he said. "Drugs are only a byproduct of that struggle to 
accept yourself for who you are, and not try and hide all the time."

David Sheff is relieved his family is no longer seized with worry 
about Nic's well-being. He's currently working on a book that 
approaches addiction from a government-policy angle. He's already 
received hundreds of letters from parents who have also spent 
sleepless nights waiting for the car to pull up in the driveway.  Or 
for the 5 a.m. phone call.

"We remember the traumas of that time, but not just the traumas, also 
the lovely moments, too," he said, looking at his son. "Nic's been 
sober for more than two years, so we've had all this time to evolve. 
It's sort of like back to normal. Maybe a new normal."

For information about methamphetamine use, visit the Web site of the 
National Institute on Drug Abuse at www.nida.nih.gov.

For times and locations of local Crystal Meth Anonymous meetings, 
call (415) 835-4747, visit norcalcma.org or e-mail For times and locations of local Al-Anon and Alateen meetings, call 
(415) 626-5633. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake