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The novel “Beautiful Boy” written by David Sheff is a non-fiction story told through his perspective based on his experience of with addiction. His son Nicholas Sheff has an addiction; his drug of choice is methamphetamine, documented to be one of the hardest drug addictions to combat. The novel shows the progression of Nic’s life told through the eyes of his father, from the moment he was born until he was twenty three years of age. Before Nic’s addiction he started off as a well-rounded child who enjoyed many activities and was quite intelligent. Through the progression of the book Nic started getting into trouble with substance abuse, he was admitted to rehab which failed. He returned again, but had the same result he was in and out of rehab for the majority of the novel. David Sheff shows his battle of addiction with his son. Within the first chapters of the novel he presents himself as an ideal father perhaps even a father figure for others to model after. Besides having been …show more content…
The father is a great writer; he does a great job throughout the story of allowing the reader to almost enter into his feelings and thoughts in many different situations. It allowed the reader to feel as if they were going through the experience with him. He presents a lot of research and facts on the substance methamphetamine and the effects it presents to the user. The thoughts the author leaves with the reader is that David had no idea as to what played an impact in his son`s addiction. The story does not give a definite ending, because of the reality of addiction is that there truly is no end it is an on-going journey. This novel could really help people who are going through a similar situation, letting them know they are not alone. This novel receives a rating of seven out of ten because of the amount of background reading that is unnecessary to do in the first, it gives a boring appeal to the story
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.
Gabor Mate 's essay “Embraced by the Needle” addresses important issues on the negative effects that childhood experiences have on the development of addictions, and the long term effects that drugs play throughout an addict 's life. The author states that addictions originate from unhappiness and pain that is often inflicted upon addicts at early age such as infancy. In Mate essay, he uses many patients past childhood experiences to help create a picture of the trauma that an addict faced as child and the link it plays with who they are today. Mate builds an impressive argument based on the way he organizes his ideas on what addiction is, and how it corresponds to a person 's childhood experience. The author does this effectively
David is the author of this auto-biography. He lived the perfect life up until his mother took up drinking at the age of four. Dave enjoyed school and had a wide imagination. He lived a perfect life and was blessed with perfect parents. Everyday was a new adventure filled with fun. He loved his life and his family.
One day Gabi went into the garage and her father was lying unconscious on the ground with a pipe in his hand. He had died. She called the police and everything but it was no use, his death was caused by a meth overdose. Nevertheless Gabi faced her father’s death with grace and courage. His death had inspired her to read poetry in front of people, something she never could do before. The poem was about him and how nobody knew what it was like to have a dad who was a meth addict, watching him deteriorate day after day. Gabi kept saying over and over “ But you don’t know my dad.” Yet she fought through the tough times and became even stronger because of the trials she faced.
the story of his journey and struggle to overcome his addiction with the help of the native
Criticisms (Favourable): Very original, intelligent plot. Well-written characters that aren’t two dimensional and who make human decisions (David’s father, who may seem like a cruel man but who is really just doing what he was brought up to believe is right).
1. In the book, the father tries to help the son in the beginning but then throughout the book he stops trying to help and listens to the mother. If I had been in this same situation, I would have helped get the child away from his mother because nobody should have to live like that. The father was tired of having to watch his son get abused so eventually he just left and didn’t do anything. David thought that his father would help him but he did not.
Nic Sheff wrote a masterpiece that is viewed both as fiction as well as the educational and life changing book. It became one of the most selling books due to its portrayal of the effects of drug addictions. Tweak gives a chronology of events that transpired during the growth of the character, both in a forward and backward manner. Nic in the first pages of the book gives some faint reason as to why he got hooked on drug addiction. It is at this point that we come to learn about his background and family life.
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 through out the text as it shows addiction from a whole person view. The book covers the development of addiction from desire through the experience of addiction. The key focus on looking at the matter of addiction from multiple stand points in 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. This is then followed by insightfully exampling the treatment process, specifically through grace as a key focus of overcoming addiction.
Dr. Carl Hart had a very rocky childhood and through his own determination to not repeat the past has gotten to where he is now in life. He comes from a broken family plagued by domestic violence, divorce, and a lack of support while he was growing up. Dr. Hart’s views on; social support, addiction and the physiological effects on the brain, factors to take into account when assessing drug abusers, drug policies influencing discrimination, and decriminalizing drug use are well articulated through his book High Life; in which enabled the audience to have raw reactions to his personal views.
Drugs are known to be the shortcut to nefarious and decadent life. Jesus’ Son is a collection of stories containing vivid narrative about life as a drug addict. These stories are all told in first person narrative, which is perhaps one person who is suffering from poverty and drug addiction. They are seemingly disconnected but are all about the experience of drug addiction, working together under the theme of drug addiction and how it fragments people mentally and physically. “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” and “Work” both convey this theme by using abrupt tone and unique figurative language. However, “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” characterizes the protagonist more directly to reveal the fall of protagonist because of drug.
Beautiful Boy is a well-written book in a sense that despite the heavy topic, it is easily read. This book is very personal and full of emotional load. This is a story, told by a father of a drug-addicted son, and this story does not differ from many other on the similar topic. Nevertheless, it can be concluded that such stories are the most honest, since stories about substance abuse are very often the same. In my personal opinion, this book is very precious for people who experience or had experienced the same problem as David Sheff, especially when it is read in tandem with Nic Sheff’s Tweak. These two books may give a good insight on the issue of drug abuse, and revel the perceptions of both family and addicted person.
David Sheff’s memoir, Beautiful Boy, revolves around addiction, the people affected by addiction, and the results of addiction. When we think of the word addiction, we usually associate it with drugs or alcohol. By definition, addiction is an unusually great interest in something or a need to do or have something (“Addiction”). All throughout the memoir, we are forced to decide if David Sheff is a worried father who is fearful that his son, Nic Sheff’s, addiction will kill him or if he is addicted to his son’s addiction. Although many parents would be worried that their son is an addict, David Sheff goes above and beyond to become involved in his son’s life and relationship with methamphetamine, making him an addict to his son’s addiction.
What is admired about this article is that it show the numbers of many different people that is effect by this form of substance abuse. The numbers are telling how they are being effected or how they are effecting others and even how they winded up with this situation in the first place. The article is a design experiment but also give a variety of
Drug addiction is a very big problem in today’s society. Many people have had their lives ruined due to drug addiction. The people that use the drugs don’t even realize that they have an addiction. They continue to use the drug not even realizing that their whole world is crashing down around them. Drug addicts normally lose their family and friends due to drug addiction.