Beautiful Boy: By David Sheff - It's About More Than Adiction

As a parent I have questioned what I should do, how to respond, and what information to share with my children. I have sought counseling and read multiple self-help books in an attempt to "do the right thing". Nothing has helped me make peace with the most debilitating hurdle of being a parent: mortality. I am ephemeral, my husband is, and despite our best efforts to defer it so are our children. At some point all parents succumb to the overwhelming, invasive, gut wrenching worry that sucks at their soul when a child is late, isn't where they are supposed to be, or rages against controls. Imagine a decade of living and writing that moment.

Page 15: " ...I learned another lesson, a soul-shaking one: our children live or die with or without us. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It is a devastating realization, but also liberating."

Beautiful Boy by David Sheff doesn't purport to be a self-help book nor does it make any claims to containing methods of better parenting or even dealing with addiction. Sheff goes out of his way to express his lack of confidence in his decisions. The truth is cliché; children do not come with manuals. No one knows what is the right or wrong thing and no two children are alike. What you get is not a how to or what not to do but a blow-by-blow account of 23 years on the front lines of parenting.

It is as much about a father living through the hell of his son's addiction as it is about a man waging an internal war for himself and the other aspects of his life. Maintaining relationships between ex-spouses, stepparents, extended family and a circle of friends and professionals is tantamount to daily combat. A life threatening brain condition and multiple relapses take their toll. What you would do? How much could you stand before you shut down? When do you stop being a parent?

Even though Beautiful Boy has been on numerous superlative lists some people may pass on it because it is touted as a treatise on drug addiction. In truth it is about being a parent, suffering for your children, losing control you never had, and struggling to retain some semblance of "real" life on the outside even when you are drowning on the inside. It is about unconditional love, undying devotion, self-realization and separation of you from your job as a parent. It is about mortality, self realized religion of a non-conforming non-denominational soul, and family ties that really do bind through all things.