Tweak by Nic Sheff

Tweak by Nic Sheff

7/10 Dropps

Atheneum, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2008

ISBN:9781416972198

Published simultaneously with his father’s New York Times bestseller (and Oprah book club pick) Beautiful Boy in 2008, Tweak tells the harrowing true story of methamphetamine addict Nic Sheff and his seemingly never ending, at times sickening, and always terrifying road to recovery. Separated into three parts and with each part divided down into specific days, it reads like successive journal entries and begins at the genesis of potentially his worse relapse to date on the streets of San Francisco. He describes his experiences using in excruciating detail, from the euphoric highs the drugs can bring at first; to attempting (and failing) to deal to bring in cash for more heroin, coke, and meth; to eventually hitting rock bottom alongside his similarly addicted girlfriend and being shipped off back to LA and entered into
a twelve-step program by his friend and former sponsor, Spencer.

The hardest parts of this section to read—and by extension, at times, the most effective—are
not the graphic imageries of needles being plunged into veins—or worse, missing the vein and being accidentally plunged into the muscle instead—or the black outs, or even the heavily prevalent vomiting, but instead are the tolls his drug use takes on his relationship with his family members and those around him. He lies, steals, breaks and enters into the homes of those he knows and loves—whatever it takes to secure the means necessary to obtain his next fix. He speaks with such a blatant honesty about these instances that the end result is completely heartbreaking. Once arriving in San Francisco and being welcomed back with open arms by Spencer, establishing a job, and reconnecting with his family, Nic
swears that he’s done for good and will—finally—turn his life around.

This is where the book begins to lose momentum. Though Sheff keeps readers engaged nearly
through to the end by employing a fast-paced first person dialogue and offering such brutally honest accounts of himself and his day-to-day life that one is left reading in a continual cringe, there is something self-defeating about the tone of this section that seems to leave you waiting for the next relapse. You know, somehow, that it just has to happen. Given the fact that section two begins a little more than halfway through the book, you may at this point also find yourself wondering what the hell else he’s going to talk about to keep your interest for the remaining 200 pages if he doesn’t have another relapse. And then you feel like a horrible person. And continue reading out of guilt.

Due to his strong connections with the Hollywood scene—his father is a much lauded journalist and the man responsible for the infamous 1980 John and Yoko Ono Playboy interview—he takes it upon himself to name drop constantly. Towards the end of the second section during his therapy sections at the Safe Passage Center in Arizona, he even openly admits that he clings to celebrity associations, much like he clung to drugs, to better enforce his practically non-existent sense of self-worth and fill that emptiness with outward symbols he can associate with self-validation. Sadly, even such insightful honesty can’t really save the annoyance the reader feels at this point. It gets old fast, and coupled with the overly dramatic tone a sober and contrite Nic takes towards the end of the book—while all the time you can’t help but to identify with his family at this point in their skepticism that anything he says is a
lie—really just lends itself to an intense desire of wanting the book to end now.

But it doesn’t, for quite some time. And then even when it does, there’s an Epilogue, and then
an Afterword, and then—oh joy!—excerpts from his blog. I believe that he wrote the book with the purest of intentions. To tell his story in a manner that would somehow expunge him of his guilt while at the same time hopefully discouraging other would-be addicts from making his same mistakes. It’s admirable, and he had a good story to tell. But when it comes down to it, he just doesn’t know when to stop. The horror of the first part of the story should have been enough to do it for most people. There’s one passage especially where his arm gets infected by a dirty needle and ends up growing a bulbous, pussy tumor roughly the size of Oklahoma (but not the shape, that’d just be weird) and almost has to be amputated in order to have it removed. He describes the experience in hauntingly specific detail. So, we get it guy. Drugs are bad. What’s not necessary is taking an additional 100 pages to wax philosophic
about how sorry you are about the whole thing. Get your message out there—but then let it speak for
itself.

On a final note, Nic Sheff writes exactly the way one would imagine he speaks, which also leaves the novel lacking a bit for literary content. It would be one thing if he was true to this concept when relating dialogue; however, it’s literally how every sentence in the entirety of the book is written. His voice as an author is, in entirety, street slang. Though, despite its graphic content and drug use, the book is officially marketed to the young adult audience, which might offer a possible explanation why Sheff and his publisher deemed it wise to write this way. To an older reader, however, it comes across as just being poorly written, and is overly obnoxious by the end of the book.

-Nicole Marie Rea