Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff's journey through his son Nic's addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery.

Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets.

With haunting candour, David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3am phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the attempts at rehab. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll.

But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic. This story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view - a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope.

Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.

Read the other side of Nic Sheff's bestselling memoir, Tweak.

Praise for Beautiful Boy:-
'A brilliant, harrowing, heartbreaking, fascinating story, full of beautiful moments and hard-won wisdom. This book will save a lot of lives and heal a lot of hearts'. Anne Lamott
'An important book... moving, timely and startlingly beautiful.' Richard Branson

Auteur

David Sheff is the author of multiple books including the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Beautiful Boy, which was recently turned into a movie starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Rolling Stone, Wired, Fortune, and elsewhere. His piece for The New York Times, "My Addicted Son," received an award from the American Psychological Association for Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addictions.