Beautiful Boy

Nic is Sheff’s son from his first marriage. His struggle with drug addiction is one of principle focuses of the story, alongside Sheff’s efforts to respond to the problem. When the reader first encounters Nic, he is a young child. Sheff’s divorce from Nic’s mother shakes him, but he largely remains happy, intelligent, creative, and charismatic. As he grows, a teacher reports that Nic is sometimes “a little depressed” but is generally “energetic, involved, fun—a leader in class” (31). Sheff is particularly “proud of his confidence and individuality” (29) and his ability to “detect, before most kids, upcoming waves of popular culture” (30). This restless search for new things, reflected in the way Nic, as he grows older, is always “into the edgiest music and then grows bored with it” (54), can be read as foreshadowing his search for experiences and sensations that ultimately culminates in him taking meth for the first time and feeling “better than ever before in my life” (180).  

Once Nic encounters meth, his deterioration accelerates, leading to his physical and mental decline. When even hospitalization does not stop Nic—he simply removes the tubes and hospital apparatus and “check[s] out against doctor’s orders”—Sheff despairs that “if this overdose isn’t enough to stop him, nothing will” (231). However, despite more relapses, by the close of the book, Nic is back in recovery. Sheff is more detached at this stage, less directly involved in his son’s recovery, but notes that “[a]s far as I know, he’s a year sober again” (354).

After Nic copes with a string of Sheff’s girlfriends, Sheff’s new wife, Karen, is a more stable influence in Nic’s life. They enjoy playing word games and drawing together, Karen encouraging Nic’s artistic side. As Karen begins to take on a more maternal role in his life, Nic comes to call her “Mama or Mamacita or KB” (42). However, the relationship is not always easy and Karen is “frequently reminded that a stepmother is not a mother. She has much of the responsibility but not the authority of a parent” (42). 

As Nic grows older and develops his addiction problems, his drug use greatly affects Karen, putting a far greater strain on their relationship. This is highlighted in the rehab educational sessions where Sheff learns that, on the mobile of the “addicted family,” the “figures dangling off to the side represent the kids and Karen, in the periphery, helpless, but inextricably tied to the moods and whims and drug-taking of the central figure” (174). Sheff’s own enabling behavior exacerbates the problem, most obviously when Nic tries to forge one of Karen’s checks. Sheff notes that Karen “dearly loves Nic, and she is stunned and wounded and fuming” (215). Although they will eventually reconnect, Karen and Nic’s relationship deteriorates so much that, having pursued Nic in her car after seeing him drive past the house, Karen admits that “I wanted to tell him to get help, but mostly I was chasing him—chasing him away from our house—from Jasper and Daisy” (258).