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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Beautiful Boy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Addiction, Ruin, and Redemption
Responsibility and Blame
Parenthood and Control
Support vs. Enabling
The Disease Model, Stigma, and Treatment
Summary
Analysis
David and Vicki agonize over what to do. Nic calls again, high, asking for money. While Vicki argues that they have to try, David responds that they cannot control what Nic is doing. Still, he doesn’t know how to give up completely. He recalls a woman he met in Al-Anon meetings who said that after seven rehabs, her son has now been sober for three years.
David again confirms the idea that while he holds out hope for Nic’s recovery, and while he wants to support Nic, he refuses to enable him. He knows that even though Nic is living in a dire situation, any money that David might give him would simply fuel his addiction.
Themes
David, Karen, and Vicki decide to pay the cost of rehab one more time if they can get Nic to go. They don’t want rehab to become a lifestyle for Nic. David speaks to Dr. Richard Rawson at UCLA, asking what he would do if his son were addicted to meth. Dr. Rawson says that he would seriously consider using an interventionist to push him toward treatment.
Even though their hope is waning, David, Karen, and Vicki still understand that they have to try to put Nic on the right path. They hope that with many people encouraging him to go to rehab, he will recognize the necessity of finding support through treatment.
Themes
One morning, Nic calls and tells David that he has a new plan: he and Z. finished their stash of meth, and they’re going to keep each other sober. Meanwhile, David hears from another friend, arguing that it’s a mistake to try rehab again and again, because rehabs are designed to keep people coming back.
David is not the only one in danger of enabling Nic. Nic’s relationship with Z., even though they try to keep each other sober, only leads to them enable each other’s’ drug addictions.
Themes
David calls interventionists, who suggest that he, Vicki, Karen, Nic’s friends, and Z. all intervene and offer Nic the chance to go to rehab. David thinks it over. He reads a passage from Addict in the Family, arguing that families should never give up hope for recovery, but also that they should never halt their own lives.
The passage from Addict in the Family affirms what David already understands: even though Nic has been locked in a cycle of relapse and recovery, it is always worth holding onto hope that he can escape that cycle. At the same time, David knows that he cannot obsess over trying to heal Nic so much that he bankrupts his own life, as he did leading up to his hemorrhage.
Themes
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In a week Nic leaves a message, saying that he is now 11 days sober. Yet later, when Nic calls again, David can tell that Nic is high. Nic says that it’s only from drugs that doctors prescribed to get him off meth, coke, and heroin. Nic says that he’s not “AA sober” but maintains that he’s sober. David hangs up. In the morning, David receives an emergency email from Z., who says that Nic dropped her off at the market that morning and said he’d be back in 15 minutes. He left her there for four hours and never came back.
Nic attempts to argue that he is getting the support he needs. However, David conveys that Nic’s addiction is simply being enabled by these doctors. When Nic presumably relapses the next day and abandons his girlfriend, this proves David’s assessment of the situation to be correct: Nic was not actually getting the help he needed.
Themes
