Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines
by Nic Sheff
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.87 You Save: $11.12 (65%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.91 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines
Book Review: Strikes a chord for its honesty
Summary: 5 Stars
Written with a first-person on-the-scene journalistic style that allows its author/protagonist an eerie degree of detachment, Nic Sheff's TWEAK is the dark counterpoint to BEAUTIFUL BOY, written by his father, David Sheff. The elder writer's grief-filled memoir glows dimly like a distant planet of despair, while the son's account of the same events burns like an angry Mars.
Nic Sheff was an attractive, almost androgynous young man of great brilliance who felt empty and false inside until he began using methamphetamine. Then he became alive and whole. "It was like, I don't know, like everything else faded out." He changed from a youthful contender for the prizes of life --- a promising career as a writer, a hint of leadership, a quiet kindness that everyone noticed when he was a child --- to a street scavenger with no future at all.
At many junctures in Nic's tale, the reader wonders how he stays alive another day and what motivates him to get up and keep his body barely functioning long enough to torture himself once again by injecting meth, heroin, crack, or whatever he could get into his collapsing veins. He comes close to losing one arm to a horrific infection that smelled of death. He nurses a girlfriend through an overdose, saving her life by having the good sense to dial 911 --- but he doesn't draw any parallels between what happened to her and what could have happened to him. He loses every good job he ever has. He steals from his father, mother, stepmother and all their friends. He even robs his kid brother. He prostitutes himself, hanging out on the brutal margins of the gay bar scene, enduring any degradation for the magical few minutes that a high affords him.
Nic drifts downward, only occasionally straightening out under the vigilance of a treatment program. The book opens when he has just completed 18 sober months, and has a job and money in the bank. He runs into an old friend named Lauren and together they plunge headlong downhill, in a very short time using up every penny he has saved to feed their habit. He even gets "work" as a drug dealer, seeing it as a pretty easy gig. He winds up having a meal in a mission church he had volunteered at in grade school. "I know I felt sorry for them --- men and women wrapped in blankets on the hard concrete...I never in my life imagined being one of them."
After Lauren comes Zelda, rumored to be the real-life Lala Zappa, niece of the rock innovator Frank Zappa. It emerges in later therapy that Nic gravitates towards famous people and that Zelda reminded him of his mother. Zelda (called "Z" in his father's book) is just the sort of self-destructive, sexually insatiable, untrammeled addict who could help Nic in his non-existent career as a writer, and drag him into a pit of madness, danger and death. That she both loved and controlled him is evidenced by the many vignettes of their shared daily doom. When, skeletal and starving, he passes out while helping her move furniture into a van so the two of them could have a yard sale of her memorabilia to feed their addictions, "I wake up to Zelda shooting me up with some coke." They sleep through the day of the yard sale.
The exhausting cycle of rob, score, get high, rob, score, get high is finally broken when Nic gets caught breaking into his mother's place. His father gives him a choice: treatment or jail. He chooses treatment, and this time it works. Nic does not moralize or suggest that he has now chosen a better way of life. His simple statement, "Using just has no place in my life now and I can't see that ever changing," does not go very far, though it may strike a chord for its honesty. Maybe someone who has been as far down and as lost as Nic can't say more.
Nic and David are close these days. They were always meant to be, but Nic's addiction took away a lot of years they could have shared. Nic is working on living quietly and becoming authentic and true to himself, while David is getting back to work as a writer. They have been involved in some publicity tours that allow them to highlight the drug problem in America. They're both more steady and clear. Maybe it's the relief of knowing that tomorrow will be a decent day, and the tomorrow after that.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
Book Review: A startlingly powerful memoir
Summary: 4 Stars
Written with a first-person on-the-scene journalistic style that allows its author/protagonist an eerie degree of detachment, Nic Sheff's TWEAK is the dark counterpoint to BEAUTIFUL BOY, written by his father, David Sheff. The elder writer's grief-filled memoir glows dimly like a distant planet of despair, while the son's account of the same events burns like an angry Mars.
Nic Sheff was an attractive, almost androgynous young man of great brilliance who felt empty and false inside until he began using methamphetamine. Then he became alive and whole. "It was like, I don't know, like everything else faded out." He changed from a youthful contender for the prizes of life --- a promising career as a writer, a hint of leadership, a quiet kindness that everyone noticed when he was a child --- to a street scavenger with no future at all.
At many junctures in Nic's tale, the reader wonders how he stays alive another day and what motivates him to get up and keep his body barely functioning long enough to torture himself once again by injecting meth, heroin, crack, or whatever he could get into his collapsing veins. He comes close to losing one arm to a horrific infection that smelled of death. He nurses a girlfriend through an overdose, saving her life by having the good sense to dial 911 --- but he doesn't draw any parallels between what happened to her and what could have happened to him. He loses every good job he ever has. He steals from his father, mother, stepmother and all their friends. He even robs his kid brother. He prostitutes himself, hanging out on the brutal margins of the gay bar scene, enduring any degradation for the magical few minutes that a high affords him.
Nic drifts downward, only occasionally straightening out under the vigilance of a treatment program. The book opens when he has just completed 18 sober months, and has a job and money in the bank. He runs into an old friend named Lauren and together they plunge headlong downhill, in a very short time using up every penny he has saved to feed their habit. He even gets "work" as a drug dealer, seeing it as a pretty easy gig. He winds up having a meal in a mission church he had volunteered at in grade school. "I know I felt sorry for them --- men and women wrapped in blankets on the hard concrete...I never in my life imagined being one of them."
After Lauren comes Zelda, rumored to be the real-life Lala Zappa, niece of the rock innovator Frank Zappa. It emerges in later therapy that Nic gravitates towards famous people and that Zelda reminded him of his mother. Zelda (called "Z" in his father's book) is just the sort of self-destructive, sexually insatiable, untrammeled addict who could help Nic in his non-existent career as a writer, and drag him into a pit of madness, danger and death. That she both loved and controlled him is evidenced by the many vignettes of their shared daily doom. When, skeletal and starving, he passes out while helping her move furniture into a van so the two of them could have a yard sale of her memorabilia to feed their addictions, "I wake up to Zelda shooting me up with some coke." They sleep through the day of the yard sale.
The exhausting cycle of rob, score, get high, rob, score, get high is finally broken when Nic gets caught breaking into his mother's place. His father gives him a choice: treatment or jail. He chooses treatment, and this time it works. Nic does not moralize or suggest that he has now chosen a better way of life. His simple statement, "Using just has no place in my life now and I can't see that ever changing," does not go very far, though it may strike a chord for its honesty. Maybe someone who has been as far down and as lost as Nic can't say more.
Nic and David are close these days. They were always meant to be, but Nic's addiction took away a lot of years they could have shared. Nic is working on living quietly and becoming authentic and true to himself, while David is getting back to work as a writer. They have been involved in some publicity tours that allow them to highlight the drug problem in America. They're both more steady and clear. Maybe it's the relief of knowing that tomorrow will be a decent day, and the tomorrow after that.
--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott
Book Review: Courtesy of Teens Read Too
Summary: 4 Stars
Methamphetamine use, commonly known on the street as crystal, tweak, the New Prozac, and crank, has become a growing problem in the U.S. in the last several years. From what I have read, there is no worse drug addiction than crystal meth. It not only affects the person using but the personal relationships they have, as well. It is not just my humble opinion when I tell you that these drugs have the power to kill or cause great harm. A great example would be Nic Sheff, the author of TWEAK. At an early age, just a babe himself, Nick had his first taste of drugs and alcohol. Drug use escalated in Nic's case - he went from just smoking pot to abusing cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth. For over a decade, on and off, Nic used drugs. The book opens up with a bang - Nic relapsing after 18 months of being clean and sober.
You can call TWEAK a young adult book if you like, since Nic is a young adult, just in his twenties, but in actuality it is a book that will appeal to any age level, young and old alike. Teens will definitely gravitate to Nic's story because of the fact that it is someone about their age using drugs, and they can relate to it (maybe not completely but on some level). The general public may find it of interest, because it will give them an insight into the mind of an addict. Perhaps a reader may find comfort in this story, knowing that he is not alone.
It occurred to me as I was reading TWEAK that the book was like a cleanser for Nic; a way to cleanse his soul. Writing TWEAK couldn't have been easy for him, as Nic had to relive everything he did and put it down on paper. Some of what I read admittedly shocked me. I can't imagine what goes inside an addict's mind. The book was so honest; at times I ached for him. Other times I wanted to strangle him for what he was doing to himself and his family. I hate to say that I didn't think his clean and sober status was going to last very long. It was as if it was too good to be true. At the end of the book, we learn that Nic is now clean and dealing with his demons on an everyday basis. I expect that this is not going to be an easy road for him or for his family.
Everybody participates in addictive behavior in some way or another. Some people believe that people get involved in addictive behaviors because they are reckless, self-absorbed, and have no self-control. For the most part, I stand in the camp that believes that drug and alcohol addictions are diseases. You may choose to get treatment, but once an addict always an addict. Nic is never going to escape the addict label even if he does remain clean the rest of his life.
Nic's father, David Sheff, also has written a book about meth addiction. Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction looks at Nic's addiction through the eyes of a parent. Mary Pipher, a psychologist and the renowned author of the book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, says on the jacket of David Sheff's book: "When one of us tells the truth, he makes it easier for all of us to open our hearts to our pain and that of others." Good reason to read Nic's book and his father's. Pick up your copies today.
Reviewed by: coollibrarianchick
Book Review: Lost Soul
Summary: 5 Stars
Having just finished "Beautiful Boy" recently I had to move on to "Tweak" and close the chapter of Nic and his father and their experiences with drug addiction. Tweak is written by Nic Sheff who is the son of David Sheff. David wrote "Beautiful Boy which I talked about a couple of weeks ago.
Tweak takes a slice of the time period from "Beautiful Boy" and tells his perspective as the drug addict giving a depiction of his experiences firsthand. The two books together give you an interesting dual viewpoint of a time period as you understand the turmoil that the father encounters and now the conflicting feelings that Nic felt as he experienced life as a drug addict.
Finding himself in a downward spiral with nothing to grab to stop his fall, Nic experiments at a young age quickly moving to hard drugs and at one point is willing to inject or ingest anything that is within reach. He loses ties with all his family members and friends as he steals and lies his way through several rehabs only to relapse back into the seedy world of addicts. Having no money and nowhere to live at points in his life he resorts to prostitution to pay for his habit doing whatever it takes to scrape together enough money for the next day's high.
As in most cases (I am guessing) Nic has to find out that while addiction is a disease he must also deal with his personal feelings and reasons behind why he became addicted in the first place. His self image and lack of self worth play such a role in needing the drugs to keep him feeling like he is capable of dealing with normal life situations. His parents have to deal with the roles that they played in setting the foundation of Nic's psychological foundation and struggle with second guessing what they could have done differently to build a healthier environment.
In the end it is Nic's life and no matter what happened in his childhood he is the one that has to deal with where he is and make the decision to like himself enough to pull out of the world he has become so accustom. The story is again a difficult one to read but it is such a must for anyone who has children nearing their teen years and beyond. Drugs are so prevalent in our society and I personally feel until we realize this and embrace dealing with the temptations head on we will continue to struggle with our children's temptations.
I am making my fifteen year old daughter read this and would strongly encourage anyone with children who has not read these two books to do so. "Tweak" is a little choppy at times in the writing style but the emotion that the book is written with is so abundantly genuine that it reads adequately enough to bring the story across. You find yourself rooting for Nic while at the same time loathing who he is and what he has become. Like all parents I would find it difficult to let go and push my child out of my life but in the world of drug addiction there is only one person that can decide on changing and that is the addict themselves.
Hopefully Nic finds his way and the family can heal. I would rate this book as a must read.
Book Review: 3.5 Stars
Summary: 4 Stars
I should preface this by saying my sister is a recovering Meth and Heroin Addict. The stark contrast between what is available for treatment when you have parents with money and insurance is astounding but not surprising. I would have killed to have the resources to get my sister into the types of treatment that Nic had access to. In the end, it may or may not have made any difference because addiction is one of the few personal journeys that one takes with everyone they love in the front seat powerless to alter the direction.
Dealing with my sister's addiction and our addiction to her I truly believe that people will treat you as badly as you allow them and they will get away with what they can. I wonder if Nic always felt like he had a safety net knowing his parents had the insurance and financial means to afford his rehab once he had reached a bottom he was not comfortable with. Not saying this to minimize the complete and utter despondency that is synonymous with addiction but perhaps a different perspective when it comes to addiction and socioeconomic status.
Tweak begins at a fast and engaging pace for about the first 100 or so pages. During the first of Nic's description of his sobriety the book begins to lag and become repetitive and I start to wish there was a "Name-Dropper Anonymous" that Nic could attend and breathed a sigh of relief when his treatment facility suggested he spend the time not focusing on who he knows. During some points of the book he describes his situation with brutal honesty and at other points he glosses over situations that would have added an extra layer of depth and understanding to the book.
The lowest part of Nic's addiction appears to be at a point before his books started. I felt like to truly understand how low he had reached in his addiction it was important to read more about this period in his life as it affected him so greatly in the book and was only mentioned in an almost passing way. We read about the aftermath of his time as a prostitute but again the details of this time period were glossed over again lessening the impact of the book.
I was surprised to see who Nic decided to dedicate his book to. Perhaps, I am jaded after reading "Beautiful Boy" and dealing with the utter despair that a family member feels when an addict in the family is knocking on death's door with an uncontrolled and desperate vigor and you tying to do anything to slow their nose dive into hell and realizing there is nothing you can do but watch. The choice of dedication also left me with the feeling that we were missing more pieces of the puzzle to Nic's story.
I would absolutely recommend this book and his father's "Beautiful Boy" to anyone dealing with an addict in the family even with the books imperfections it is an insightful read and gives a sometimes powerful glimpse into the mind of addiction but also leaves a lot of unanswered holes and questions about Nic's life as an addict.