David Sheff narrates; Beautiful Boy, the chronicles his journey to help understand his son substance abuse addiction of methamphetamine. The background of the story shares the brutal and hopeful accounts of a drug addiction. It entails the boundless fears and desperation of a father's reality and experiences of his son's addiction. The irresistible and uncontrollable nature of the urge of his son's addiction leads to a path of self-destructive behavior. David documents his son's short-lived recreational drug use to an on-going spiraling addiction. He commits to helping his son through sobriety in the face of losing his son.
Beautiful Boy takes an account of an informative and educational book to support and help those facing an addiction.
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Sheff (2008) found that "Addict's family walks an unhappy path that is strewn with many pitfalls and false starts. Mistakes are inevitable. Pain is inevitable. But so are growth and wisdom and serenity if families approach addiction with an open mind, a willingness to learn, and the acceptance that recovery, like addiction itself, is a long and complex process. Families should never give up hope for recovery-for recovery can and does happen every day. Nor should they stop living their own lives while they wait for that miracle of recovery to occur" (Sheff, 2008, pg. 230).
David successfully opened several potentially relevant issues to how methamphetamine addiction affects more than the addict. This particular piece of his journey shows addiction affects the family and individuals around the addict. David disclosed that his son would explore and experiment with marijuana and alcohol, however; he never anticipated losing his son to a drug addiction. The role of methamphetamine followed an addictive pattern of deception and stealing as the drug choice for David's
The book I chose to read for this assignment is called “Stay Close: A Mother’s Story of Her Son’s Addiction”. The target audience can be parents, adolescents, recovering addicts, college students and mental health professionals.
The author uses his knowledge of the human brain to emphasize the importance of “Endorphins” when growing up and how the lack of the chemicals “in infancy and early childhood,[creates a greater need] for external sources” (289) such as drugs. Along with his scientific evidence, Mate also uses many of his patients traumatic childhood experiences such as having “dishwashing liquid poured down his throat . . . and was tied to a chair in a dark room to control to his hyperactivity” (289). These patients help create an image for the readers to be able to understand the feelings and the pain addict 's often face in their childhood, that leaves them feeling abandoned and neglected from the rest of the world. Mate even analysis the fact that addict 's can come from home where there is no abuse and the parents try their best to provide a loving and nurturing home. The problem in families like this is often a parent is the one who faced traumatic experience as a child and are not able to transmit the proper love to their child, because they lack the feeling themselves. The author uses the strategy of looking at both the child and the parent experiences to show that the root problem originates from the same outcome, wanting to feel “unconditionally [loved and be] fully accepted even when most ornery”
In David Sheff’s book “Beautiful Boy” he utilizes descriptive diction, allusions to other works, and vivid imagery to recreate the experiences he’s gone through during his son’s addiction, times in recovery, and relapses.
Throughout “Chasing the Scream” many intriguing stories are told from individuals involved in the drug war, those on the outside of the drug war, and stories about those who got abused by the drug war. Addiction has many social causes that address drug use and the different effects that it has on different people. In our previous history we would see a tremendous amount of individuals able to work and live satisfying lives after consuming a drug. After the Harrison Act, drugs were abolished all at once, but it lead to human desperation so instead of improving our society, we are often the reason to the problem. We constantly look at addicts as the bad guys when other individuals are often the reasons and influences to someone’s decision in
Drugs is one of the themes in this story that shows the impact of both the user and their loved ones. There is no doubt that heroin destroys lives and families, but it offers a momentary escape from the characters ' oppressive environment and serves as a coping mechanism to help deal with the human suffering that is all around him. Suffering is seen as a contributing factor of his drug addiction and the suffering is linked to the narrator’s daughter loss of Grace. The story opens with the narrator feeling ice in his veins when he read about Sonny’s arrest for possession of heroin. The two brothers are able to patch things up and knowing that his younger brother has an addiction. He still buys him an alcoholic drink at the end of the story because, he has accepted his brother for who he really is.
In the book, Addiction & Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions, May explores how addiction develops and can be treated from a psychological, physiological, and spiritual standpoint. This theme is clearly shown throughout the text as it shows addiction from a whole person's perspective. The book covers the development of addiction from desire through the experience of addiction. The key focus is on looking at the matter of addiction from multiple stand points then broken down by explaining how addiction is an issue psychologically, physiologically, and spiritually. By focusing on these three areas, the author is able to present the reader with a clear understanding of addiction from all sides of the problem.
“Meth, not even once” is a popular phrase that is associated with this drug. This drug has many known horrible effects associated with it, plus many effects more I am sure are going to be discovered over time. I am intending to cover the history, effects, the different categories of meth abuse, and the withdrawal effects of Methamphetamine in this paper, and what to do if you suspect someone you know is using meth.
Young adults with opioid addictions worry what their friends, family and even doctors will think of them and hesitate to seek professional help. The result is that teen addiction often remains unaddressed, and it inevitably worsens without treatment. As a society, there is a lack of education about addiction as a disease, so most people simply don’t know how recovery works. Recovery from addiction is long and painful, and the stigma around addiction only prevents people from getting the help they need, making it crucial for society to look past the stigma that people in recovery are always on the brink of relapse, a false perception that affects self-esteem and relationships.
This experience helped me to recognize the internal struggle that a substance abuser faces on a continuous basis. In addition, I know that an individual can have a difficult time changing their behavior even when they have a strong desire to change; the smallest thing can cause a person to relapse.
The nonfiction book I read was titled Beautiful Child and was written by Torey Hayden. Beautiful Child follows the life of a special education teacher who is new to a school is met with a challenging class consisting of five children, all with very different needs. The class consists of a child who has tourette’s syndrome (Jesse), a child who we later find out has dyslexia (Billy), two twins who have fetal alcohol syndrome (Shane and Zane), and a young girl who is selectively mute (Venus.) Although through the story we see each child grow and progress, Venus is the main character and we see her open up to Torey through books and most important She-Ra comics. As Venus’ story unfolds, so do the horrendous details of her family that include a past of drug abuse and prostitution. The quietness of Venus that left many confused, begins to make
Dr. Hart argues that social support systems shape how a person deals with their addiction. He brings in the story
Beautiful Boy was released in 2008 and approximately at the same time another book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines was published. The second book is written by Nic Sheff, the addicted son who gives reader different perspective on the same events that were described by his father. These two books are unique in their own way, since they give two different perspectives on the same, very widespread and so difficult issue - the struggle with substance abuse.
All throughout the true story, Beautiful Boy, David Sheff displays unhealthy addictive tendencies for his son and his son’s addiction to meth. Because of Sheff’s addiction to Nic, he became unable to trust his son, unable to care for himself when he got ill, and made it impossible for himself to enjoy time with his other children because the thought of past memories with Nic haunted him. Although it is normal that parents worry about their children, Sheff went further than many parents would to try and get through to his
New Boy is a short film that envelops the viewer into a third person character and leads viewers to experience how it feels to be an outsider “The New Boy”, the audience experiences this feeling through the Protagonist 's mind in this case “Joseph.” This short film not only focuses on the idea of bullying but also the idea of being an outsider.The positioning of the title “New Boy” on the left-hand side of the frame indicates that the new boy will be powerless.
In conclusion drug addiction is a very terrible and challenging problem. It affects individuals, families, and the people around them. It is important that drug addicts realize that they must want to stop and seek help for the problem. The drug addict needs the support of friends and family, so they can make it through this process. The process to recover from drug addiction can take a lifetime. There is hope for a drug addict who wants to change their life for the better.