43 pages • 1 hour read
Nic SheffTweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Drugs as Escapism
Nic abuses drugs to escape from life. This theme of drugs as a method of escapism appears throughout his memoir both in times of sobriety and in times when Nic is using. At the end of the memoir, Nic realizes that his desire for escape enables his addiction and writes that, “If I could be content with who I am, I wouldn’t have to escape myself always” (302).
Nic most often uses drugs in order to escape from the troubling things he has done as a user. He is “so scared of coming off the drugs”(20) and describes the process as a vicious cycle. He uses and does things he is ashamed of, so he uses more “so I never had to face that” (20). In his mind, he has used for so long and accrued so many sins that turning back seems impossible. Nic even admits that he would rather die than face his actions. Rather than facing the past and taking responsibility, Nic resolves that all he can do is move forward and forget. Drugs helps him achieve just that, albeit temporarily.
Nic also uses drugs in order to escape to a world where he is able to actualize his hopes, dreams, and goals. During his relapse in San Francisco, he tells Lauren about “the book I’ve written and the job I want to get at this magazine in L.A. and suddenly it doesn’t seem like these are impossible dreams anymore” (13). Instead, drugs make Nic feel that he is capable and unstoppable. They offer escape from the real world in which he feels helpless and inadequate.
Lastly, Nic uses drugs to escape his inner demons, including severe trauma. At numerous points throughout the memoir, when faced with serious inner turmoil, Nic either desires to use or uses heavily. In one instance, after feeling “profound-consuming” grief and fear, he writes that, “I need a thousand pounds of heroin. I need to drown myself in methamphetamine. I need pills…” (116). Though he recognizes in these moments that what he may really need is to get sober, more often than not, he turns to drugs to escape his feelings instead. Nic admits that oftentimes he is not willing to fight through difficult moments in the 12-step process to progress towards sobriety and would rather turn to drugs.
Mental Illness and Trauma
Mental illness and trauma are interconnected themes that are woven throughout Nic’s memoir. Both fuel his drug addiction, and until he is able to address them at the Safe Passage Center through their dual-diagnosis treatment that targets addiction as well as the psychoses behind it, his sobriety remains superficial and cloudy. In the case of mental illness, Nic is plagued by depression and bipolar disorder. In the case of trauma, Nic is haunted by physical and emotional trauma he has experienced throughout his life—buried deep—and refused to address.
Nic often expresses feelings of deep depression, despair, and worthlessness. He comments on how he always felt ugly and how “nothing about me ever seemed good enough” (36). Nic admits that he often focused on his physical appearance, buying expensive clothes, and grooming himself in order to avoid “trying to address the internal shit” because “the pit opening up inside me was too frightening to look at” (36). He describes his mental illness most poignantly as “seven candles lit in my stomach […] Seven candles burning and smoking—lit—seven flames of doubt, fear, sorrow, pain, waste, hopelessness, despair. They turn my insides black with soot and ash” (109).
When Nic receives a professional diagnosis confirming that he struggles with depression and bipolar disorder, he feels validated and relieved. He is also frustrated and sad that he has lived so long with mental illness but was never appropriately treated. Nic had regularly wondered before this whether there was something chemically wrong and why his feelings of isolation always seemed so much more insurmountable than those of his friends. His medication helps him achieve some balance and stability. Addressing his physical and emotional trauma at the Safe Passage Center, through regular individual and group therapy and various exercises, is equally helpful in allowing Nic to recognize own his trauma in order to release and move on from it. Treating both his mental illness and his trauma is essential to his sobriety.
Family
One of the primary causes behind his drug addiction that Nic is reluctant to address is his turbulent family history, particularly the separation of his parents. Nic shies away from addressing this issue head on so much that only sparse pieces of this issue come together to reveal how his childhood led him to become an addict. Rather than providing him with an incentive to stay sober, Nic’s parents cause him to relapse again and again because he refuses to address the traumatic impact they and their actions have had on him.
Nic’s parents had an unhappy marriage and separated when he was young. His mother moved to Los Angeles and left his father to raise Nic, causing him to develop abandonment issues and gravitate towards older women who remind him of his mother. Despite the fact that Nic refuses to admit this, growing up with his father, who treated him like an adult and exposed him to drug and alcohol abuse and sex at a very young age, was also harmful for his development. On one hand, it put him in the path of substance abuse early in his life. On the other, it robbed Nic of the proper childhood he yearns for constantly throughout the memoir.
Nic feels rejected by his family, like a guest and a visitor, and this is partially why he turns to drugs. In particular, he feels like his father’s mistake, a mistake he corrected by remarrying and having more children. After using for so long and hurting his family members in the process, Nic’s feelings of rejection deepen. As he walks through his father’s house after a relapse, he writes that, “I feel dirty—like I’m this charcoal stain polluting everything I touch” (16). In Nic’s mind, he can never make up the past to his family. However, he has a strong desire to do so, writing that “I want to buy out a billboard over Sunset Boulevard. I want to take out ads in all the big papers. I want to write my message in the sky. I want to tell them all, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so goddamn sorry’” (147). That being said, Nic refuses to recognize his parents’ role in his addiction or blame them for any part of it. He is proud of the way his father raised him, and he devotes little attention to directly addressing his issues with his mother. It is only after he enters the Safe Passage Center that he is able to vent his resentment and anger towards his parents.
