Nic Sheff is a former drug addict who was addicted to methamphetamine. Although he is now sober that wasn’t always the case. It is documented that Nic has relapsed plenty of times and was constantly fighting the battle of drug addiction.
Nic took his first sip of alcohol at just 11 years old. Later after this, he would spiral into addiction and go into rehab for the first time at just 19 years old. In the book “Beautiful Boy”, we get an insight from David’s perspective (Nic’s father). In that book, Nic told him that he took LSD the night that he graduated. After that is when Nic would start to get into harder drugs such as methamphetamine. It is known that Marijuana is a gateway drug, if you smoke it you’re way more likely to get into harder drugs. We see this example with Nic who smoked Marijuana plenty of times and then later did hard drugs. He did other drugs such as acid, mushrooms, ecstasy, and cocaine.
When Nic was just 18 years old is when he first tried meth. He states that after his first time using it that his whole world had changed. He felt like he had a lot of confidence and that he was very strong. He wanted to continue to hold onto that feeling for a while since it was the best he ever felt in his entire life. After this day, Nic became addicted doing meth continuously almost every single day. This addiction consumed his life and not only had an effect on him but also on his family.
A person who really started to notice these changes in Nic was his father David. David recalls that he remembers Nic doing things such as skipping class which was unusual because he’d never done such things. He knew that his son was in trouble but was in denial about his addiction. He would see the good things and hear the good things but it got to a point where he couldn’t block out all the bad things anymore.
After speaking to a counselor at Nic’s highschool, David decided to let Nic go to college believing from what the counselor stated that it would “straighten him out”. While Nic went there for his freshman year, he didn’t quite make it all the way through. Initially knowing this, David tried to keep his son’s addiction from his family feeling that he is partly to blame. Feeling like he may not have been a good enough father to stop him.
We see deeper moments in the book that David wrote called “Beautiful Boy”. Throughout this book we get more insight into Nics relapses and how much of an effect that it truly had on his family. Going into college David was skeptical but eventually let him go. After he gets to college he relapses multiple times and David doesn’t realize until Nic comes home from college. He has his suspicions that Nic is using again and then gets reason to believe Nic stole his little brother’s money to buy drugs. They fight and Nic leaves angry.
This becomes a common pattern among them, them fighting about Nics addiction and him getting angry, then leaving. This is a pattern that would follow Nic up until he became sober. He was constantly relapsing and giving into drugs even when he would become sober for some time.
It wouldn’t be until 2011 that Nic would become sober after all of his relapses and even near death experiences. Nic talks about his struggle, even writing a book titled “Tweak” talking about his journey with drugs. He also wrote another book titled “We all Fall Down”, talking about his journey after he officially became sober. At the time of this article he is now 42 years old and married.
We know that David had a big impact to help make his son sober. There was even a movie implemented on their story called “Beautiful Boy” starring Steve Carrell and Timothy Chalamet. When this movie was released it impacted a lot of people and people hold this story in their hearts. I only wish the best for anyone who’s addicted and in fact I encourage anyone who’s addicted to anyone to get help. If you need help don’t be afraid to call 988 for help, they are open 24/7.
