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Whistle Stopper - Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction
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List Price: $24.00
Our Price: $11.20
Your Save: $ 12.80 ( 53% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Co
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.299
EAN: 9780618683352
ISBN: 0618683356
Label: Houghton Mifflin Co
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Co
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 326
Publication Date: 2008-02-26
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co
Release Date: 2008-02-26
Studio: Houghton Mifflin Co
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A gutsy book
Comment: It's hard to write an honest book when the book will reveal that you, its central character, are a helpless onlooker to the terrible waste of a beautiful person, your beautiful boy, your eldest son. David Sheff has written that book.
David's son Nic was, is, special. He began winning writing prizes at an early age. He had a clear, tender visage and a brilliant mind. He was obviously destined for worldly success. All that promise died when, at age 11, he started using pot, then booze, then LSD.
Then he graduated. To meth.
Methamphetamine isn't a trendy drug. It isn't imported. It isn't a party favorite. It's manufactured in filthy garages by deranged addicts-turned-dealers, a trip of last resort for people who simply must go the downward route. It turns its users into raging animals, then passive wraiths, enhancing their sexual peaks and darkening their lowest fevered valleys. Nic, the sweet, smart, beautiful boy, became evasive, dishonest, a thief, a prostitute, a street person --- he sank and sank.
David grew up in a generation that embraced the use of drugs --- pot smoking, in the Berkeley hills where he raised Nic and his two half-siblings, was completely acceptable. Not using drugs would have been abnormal. So the good, liberal dad anticipated that Nic might have contact with drugs and might need some guidance. He saw his son turn into a skeletal stranger, but he chose to believe it was just a little pot, just a little alcohol, just something that could be dealt with easily by counseling or, at the most, a period of a few weeks in standard rehab.
For both father and son, it took years --- agonizing, tragic, lost years --- to understand that Nic was not going to emerge one day as a normal guy, finish college and settle down. Nic was unmoored. David learned that addiction begins with a predilection lurking way back in the genetic code. But what happens next are acts of will. The addict knows that he or she must break the addictive cycle, go into rehab and stay with the program. But over and over again, addicts like Nic refuse and reject that avenue of salvation. They are in a dance with evil, and often, for reasons no one else can understand, they want to die.
David and his wife despaired when Nic would sneak in and steal their belongings or write bad checks on their accounts. They were exhausted by trying to care and yet be tough, forced to use every encounter with Nic as a confrontation to convince him to do something he didn't want to do. David lived through all the guilt trips --- it was his fault for divorcing when Nic was young, for not figuring things out soon enough, for not doing something that could have saved Nic. But what? Then came anger and resentment at being used, ripped off by his addict son; then Nic would disappear again and David would think with horror, "Nic could die." David knew that Nic needed to have a serious crisis so he could see the need for a change. He'd been told that for the change to take hold "you have to be alone, broke, desolate, desperate." Surely Nic had been all those, but he didn't come up and stay up. Nic's little half-sister Daisy put it wisely: "It's like Nic is like my brother who I know and this other guy who I don't."
David realized one day that he missed Nic and wanted him back, but that the Nic he loved was gone already, and forever. Yet still there were those precious times, such as when Nic would come home occasionally and play with his half-sister and brother, or when David was immobilized after a near-fatal subarachnoidal hemorrhage and Nic was there, sitting by his bed, holding out a lifeline to his ailing father like a flickering promise. Such times keep a parent hoping, even when they find themselves collapsing in tears at an Al-Anon meeting, pouring out their story to a roomful of strangers.
It took guts to write this book, and guts to live through what David Sheff has lived through. He offers the few tips he has picked up along the way, but he doesn't consider himself a font of advice. With Nic still in some stage of recovery at the book's close, David can only say, "I am confident I have done everything I could to help Nic. Now it's up to him...our relationship can evolve into one of independence, acceptance, and compassion, with healthy boundaries. The love is a given."
--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
Customer Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Comment: One of the best books I have read in the last year and one of the most riveting memoirs I've read in a long, long time.
David Sheff is able to portray the frustration, anger, angst and incredible agony of living with a loved one who is addicted without being self-serving or over dramatic.
Each time his son disappears, your stomach drops and you are almost there with Sheff while his worry and doubt eat away at him. Each time Nic fails, you want to shout at him and each time he gets back up you want to cheer for him.
Sheff's hope and grief come through in every chapter and you are constanly left wondering "what if?"
But while Sheff succeeds mightily in putting you in the room with him, he doesn't wallow nor does he force his readers to wade in self pity.
I've already ordered Tweak and I'm hoping Nic has all of the candor of his dad and even half the story-telling ability.
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Summary: Every Parent Knows
Comment: In the back of all our minds when our beautiful sons and daughters are born is the realization of all the evil that can be laid upon them by society and by themselves. Those adorable, cute, huggable children face step after step of hazardous life --- made especially hazardous during the teenage years when being "with it" often means being dumb.
This book is where many of us have not gone but know we could have gone. Sheff is a courageous writer.
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Summary: Disappointing -- valuable only to better understand his son
Comment: Unfortunately the father/author spends so much time telling us about his idyllic life and self-importance that he fails at a thorough and genuine self-evaluation and revelation. I spent the time while reading the book wondering if he ever really listens (treats young Nic as a little adult and repeats the same by needing to explain Nic's addiction to his four-year old) and why he cannot give his son some space (He attends an AA meeting with his son as a gesture of support. I can only imagine what the AA group was thinking.).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Boy - don't just stare at it - buy it!
Comment: After standing in line at Starbuck's for as it seemed, over a month, I decided to purchase this book on Amazon.com. I haven't regretted it. David Sheff offers an inside look at a Father and Son and a horrible addiction. The book made me both happy and sad and at times, and gave me a stomach ache because of the drug's powerful pull. It's such a HOT topic these days. For those of you who have thought about buying this book - do it!
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Editorial Reviews:
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Amazon Best of the Month, February 2008: From as early as grade school, the world seemed to be on Nic Sheff's string. Bright and athletic, he excelled in any setting and appeared destined for greatness. Yet as childhood exuberance faded into teenage angst, the precocious boy found himself going down a much different path. Seduced by the illicit world of drugs and alcohol, he quickly found himself caught in the clutches of addiction. Beautiful Boy is Nic's story, but from the perspective of his father, David. Achingly honest, it chronicles the betrayal, pain, and terrifying question marks that haunt the loved ones of an addict. Many respond to addiction with a painful oath of silence, but David Sheff opens up personal wounds to reinforce that it is a disease, and must be treated as such. Most importantly, his journey provides those in similar situations with a commodity that they can never lose: hope --Dave Callanan
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