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Book Review of Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction
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A wonderful companion to _Tweaked_, David Sheff's son Nic's own precocious memoir of his addiction to meth and other substances, _Beautiful Boy_ also stands as an amazing memoir in its own right. Sheff depicts the hope and hopelessness of a parents, step-parents, siblings, and extended family coping (and, often, not coping) with the drama and trauma of loving a drug-addicted child, as that child moves from the seemingly manageable ups and downs of adolescence to the dangers of an independent and uncontrollable life of a young adult with a chronic, nearly lethal drug addiction. I was more than once moved to tears by the crystalline clarity and unstinting honesty with which Sheff depicted his pain as a father dealing with this unexpected and almost indescribable pain and how it affected, for ill and for good, his entire family.