Addiction Rep

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? The police? The hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll, but as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on him. Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional roller coaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

"I NEED A MAN ... ANY MAN." She had blood on her dress and trouble in her eyes when she walked into Cavey Davey's tavern and roused Dr. Cain D'Alessandro from his drunken stupor. The sight of Ana, "The Duchess" —- beautiful, icy, desperate —- almost sobered him. She looked like a whore and spoke like a lady ... who had just committed murder. She had money, and they both needed to escape. So Cain D'Alessandro agreed to pose as her husband on the dangerous trip through Panama to California. But Ana hadn't reckoned on a full ship of sailors —- or the perilous trip through the Panamanian wilderness. All she had was Cain, an intimate stranger forced to abandon his liquor to save them both. Suddenly he was a threat, capable of seeing her weakness and offering his strength. And all he asked for in return was her love, something she'd never given to any man before ...