Support vs. Enabling Theme Analysis

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 and grief over Nic’s addiction. However, David makes a point to delineate between supporting someone with addiction and enabling them. Rather than allowing Nic to continue on his abusive lifestyle by giving him money or a place to live, David makes his support contingent on Nic seeking out help from a program. Thus, David argues that no one can treat addiction alone: it is necessary for addicts to seek out to people and programs that can support them in their treatment, rather than simply enabling their abusive lifestyle.

Each time Nic relapses, he insists that he can take care of himself—that he is in control and can remain in control without support. Yet at each juncture, he gradually sees that he isn’t in control, and that he has to lean on others in order to stay motivated in treatment. After Nic moves home and drops out of Berkeley, he disappears one night. When he returns home four days later, he is ill, frail, and rambling—but he asserts that he doesn’t want to go to rehab. He admits that he has taken meth, but he maintains that he’s okay. He states that he “learned how dangerous meth is” and that he’ll “never do that shit again.” Yet soon after, Nic disappears once more, for nearly two weeks. When David tracks Nic down in an alley, he describes him as a “barely recognizable phantom.” It is this incident that motivates Nic to find help. At the Oakland rehab center, a counselor affirms that she sees addicts like this all the time, who believe that “everything is all right, they can stop when they want.” The counselors recognize, however, that this insistence often causes addicts to lose everything and wind up in jail or the hospital. Alone, the prospect for recovery is bleak. After Nic’s final relapse in the book, in which he is hospitalized to detox, David again insists that he has to go back to treatment. Nic demands, “Why can’t I do it myself? Why do I need to go into another program?” But David recalls the words that Nic himself told David while he was in recovery: “Nic said he couldn’t trust his own brain and needed to rely on [his sponsor] Randy, meetings, the program, and prayer” to recover. While under the influence, addicts believe that they can get on without support—but once clear-headed, they recognize that they need help from others to remain sober and clean.

In addition to relying on the program as a whole, there are key figures along Nic’s path that help support him in times of need, and key figures in David’s life that also help him cope with the hardships of Nic’s illness. Reflecting on both of their ordeals, David argues that no matter how directly or tangentially affected a person is by addiction, it’s important to identify avenues of support. Throughout his adolescence, Nic is supported early and often by various people who serve as good influences on him. These supporters are later replaced by sponsors who help keep Nic on the right path. When Nic’s high school informs David that Nic has been suspended for buying drugs, the school identifies a teacher named Don to help him get on track. Don serves as a mentor for Nic, getting him involved in the school’s swim and water polo teams and surfing with him so that he can stay out of trouble. Nic’s sponsor Randy later mimics this dynamic, going on long bike rides with Nic when he is feeling most vulnerable. These key figures serve as a means for Nic to feel supported and comforted, so that isolation doesn’t drive him to using again. David also finds key means of support for his own anxieties surrounding Nic. He describes going to family group sessions with AA and Al-Anon, writing how he “learned how much it helps to talk about my son's addiction and reflect on it and hear and read others’ stories.” He and the rest of his family also find value in visiting a therapist to talk about how Nic’s addiction has affected their family. Leaning on others, even just having someone who can listen and understand, makes a world of difference for David.

Yet David also makes a point to recognize when support crosses a barrier into enabling. He says explicitly, giving advice to others, “I would not in any way help someone using drugs to do anything other than return to rehab. I would not pay their rent, would not bail them out of jail unless they went directly into rehab, […] and would never give them money.” At several points, David refuses to give Nic money and encourages Nic’s mother Vicki to refuse him as well. He knows that monetary support would simply be a means of fueling Nic’s drug addiction; instead, what is important is getting addicts the support they need to stop using—primarily through rehab.

David writes that he was motivated to write Beautiful Boy because of other accounts that he read about addiction. He writes, “others’ experiences did help with the emotional struggle; reading, I felt a little less crazy.” And so, in this way, the book becomes a means of support for others as well. Nic also says that the support he received in writing his own book (a companion book called Tweak) served as “a powerful affirmation of his hard work in recovery.” Thus, David and Nic’s books themselves become an exercise in mutual support.