Responsibility and Blame Theme Analysis

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. Similarly, he grapples with how much Nic is liable for his own situation, again exploring the contradictory reality that although Nic may not be entirely responsible for his condition, he must be held accountable for the choices he makes when he uses and relapses. David’s opinions on the matter evolve over time as he realizes that assigning blame isn’t easy or straightforward. Though he recognizes that addicts aren’t entirely to blame for their situations and that they often need help shouldering the burden of their disease, the book ultimately argues that an addict must take responsibility for themselves if they want to heal.

In recounting Nic’s childhood, David faults himself for not preventing Nic’s addiction. David worries about several key decisions he made over the course of Nic’s childhood and early teen years—he wonders whether different choices might have led to different outcomes for Nic. David fears that his divorce with Nic’s mother, Vicki, made it easier for Nic to develop the addiction. They divorce when Nic is three years old, and in accordance with their custody agreement, Nic spends the school year with David in San Francisco and the summers and holidays with Vicki in Los Angeles. David calls the divorce the “most traumatic event of Nic’s life.” Later, David reads statistics that “children of divorce use drugs and alcohol before the age of fourteen more often than the children of intact families.” Though he admits that many children who go through divorces don’t resort to drugs, and that many drug addicts come from intact families, he can’t help but feel that the divorce could have put Nic more at risk. David also worries about revealing his own drug use to Nic, which included heavy marijuana and alcohol usage growing up and in college, as well as psychedelics, mushrooms, Quaaludes, cocaine, “random uppers and downers,” and even meth on one occasion. Later, he learns later that many counselors suggest that parents lie to their children about their drug use out of concern that it will make drugs seem more acceptable, despite parents’ message that they are dangerous. Instead, David told Nic the truth, feeling “naively” that Nic would tell him if he was using drugs. Afterward, he regrets telling Nic the truth—an additional worry that puts the blame on David’s shoulders. David also agonizes in hindsight about sharing a joint with 17-year-old Nic. This comes at a point in high school when David is concerned about Nic’s increasing drug usage, but he hopes that smoking together will help them bond. He hopes that the action will also convince Nic that David knows what he is talking about when it comes to drugs, and that it will thus encourage him to take David’s message more seriously. Afterward, however, David realizes that he should absolutely not have smoked with Nic, as this might have been a tacit endorsement of Nic’s behavior. As David looks in hindsight on his choices, he blames himself for not acting differently.

Additionally, David has to reconcile Nic’s responsibility for his own addiction, arguing that even if it may not be Nic’s fault that he has a disease, he is the only one who can control his fate. During Nic’s second stay in a rehabilitation program, David starts to learn that the predisposition to addiction can be genetic—which explains why some people are more susceptible to addiction after trying a drug once than others are. Counselors explain that the disease is in control of addicts, and that this makes it easier for people to succumb to relapses. This provides evidence for the idea that Nic may not entirely be at fault for his own addiction. At first, David is skeptical of this idea. While he recognizes that addiction is a disease that needs treatment, he also argues that people who are dying of diseases like cancer would do anything to live whereas addicts are actively harming themselves. To him, it appears that addicts have a solution to treat themselves—to stop using their substance of choice—yet they simply cannot implement it. But gradually, David recognizes that the symptoms of the disease are using and being out of control—and these are issues that people cannot help. What David realizes is that if Nic were not ill, he would not lie, steal, or hurt his family as he does over the course of his young adulthood. David comes to the conclusion—once again, a slightly paradoxical one—that even though it is not Nic’s fault that he has a disease, “it is his fault that he relapses, since he is the only one who can do the work necessary to prevent relapse. Whether or not it’s his fault, he must be held accountable.” He does not absolve Nic of responsibility entirely, but he knows that Nic would not want to hurt himself or his family if given a clear-headed choice.

David ultimately tries to reconcile the contradictions inherent in addiction. He comes to understand that the disease is caused and exacerbated by a multitude of factors, many of which cannot be predicted or controlled. Reflecting on the many potential avenues of blame, David writes, “whatever the cause—a genetic predisposition, the divorce, my drug history, my overprotectiveness, my failure to protect him, my leniency, my harshness, my immaturity, all of these—Nic’s addiction seemed to have had a life of its own.” Even this summation bears contradictions: David could not have been both under- and over-protective, both too lenient and too harsh. There is so much of the disease that is unknowable. Thus, rather than placing blame on actions in the past, it is instead important for Nic to take responsibility for continued sobriety in the future, and for David to help him shoulder that responsibility.