Beautiful Boy Themes

In Beautiful Boy, author David Sheff recounts the true story of his son Nic’s battle with meth addiction. Despite David’s attempts to intervene, Nic becomes addicted to drugs as a teenager and becomes imperiled by that addiction as he undergoes a cycle of recovery and relapse in his early twenties. Throughout these years, Nic engages in increasingly dangerous behaviors that harm himself and also devastate his family. Through the book, David paints a…

A central idea of Beautiful Boy is that of personal responsibility and blame. Author David Sheff relays the complicated and contradictory nature of searching for someone or something to blame for what has happened to his son, Nic, who is addicted to drugs. Despite multiple counselors telling David that he did not cause Nic’s addiction, David blames himself for the actions he did and didn’t take when Nic experimented with drugs as a teenager…

One of the most difficult aspects of Nic’s drug addiction is his insistence that he can handle it alone. Each time he relapses, he resists getting the help he needs from other people, asserting that he can control his disease. Yet eventually—usually following a life-threatening incident—Nic recognizes the fact that he needs help in order to treat his addiction. Even people like David, Nic’s father, require support to deal with their own frustration…

In addition to recounting Nic’s personal struggle with addiction, his father, David, aims to educate readers on addiction generally. He provides scientific information on drugs and exactly how and why addiction is so harmful. He also examines the policies surrounding addiction that have exacerbated the issue nationally. In providing all of this information, David ultimately argues for the disease model of addiction, which holds that addiction has a biological basis and should be…