Wednesday, November 30, 2011

My thoughts on "TWEAK" by Nic Sheff


(from Goodreads)

"I smoked pot every day. I was seventeen and had been accepted at prestigious universities across the country and I figured a little partying was due me. I'd worked hard those last three and a half years. Sure I'd had some problems smoking weed and drinking too much when I was younger, but that was all behind me. I was smart. I was on the swim team. My writing had been published in Newsweek." Author Nic Sheff paid a staggering price for this swagger. Under the pull of alcohol, cocaine, Ecstasy, hallucinogenic mushrooms, crystal meth, and heroin, his life collapsed, plunging him into an abyss where swim medals and writing credentials dissolved into the next great fix. This stark account of his addiction and often-painful recovery possesses a force missing from most anti-drug diatribes

MY THOUGHTS


 
This book was very intense, raw, gritty. If you are not used to reading that sort of stuff or if you are a young teen or what have you I would suggest skipping this book right now.

Nic Sheff tells us all about his life on drugs over a less then 2 year period. I believe it was between like 20-22....

Nic does not sugarcoat anything and the words he uses can be profane. There is a lot of sex (or f*cking, as he puts it at times), a lot of drugs (and not the pot and acid type, but the needle type), a lot of lying and stealing. There are a lot of feelings in this book.

Nic is human and he does feel and we learn that throughout this book. He doesn't do drugs to have fun, although that is how it started, but that is not why he continues to do them.

This book was very scary to me. I have never been around hard drugs like the kind that Nic does in this book, so to hear first hand accounts about the stuff was really disturbing for me.

Nic did want to get clean and he tried a few times throughout this 2yr period, but it never lasted. One of the things that I knew and what Nic has attested to also is that YOU have to want to get clean for YOURSELF, not for others. That is the only way that it will work. Also, the people that you hang around with will be a big difference in your recovery. But most importantly, don't think that you can get clean on your own, because you can't.

There were so many parts in this book that I would summarize to my son, who is 15, to try and instill even more how horrifying drugs are. I wanted him to hear from someone who actually has been through it.

Nic has come out with another book, We all fall down: Living with addiction, that was released April 5, 2011. This book is about " eye-opening stays at rehab centers, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young person living with addiction." (goodreads)

His father, David Sheff, has also written a book, Beautiful Boy, about his sons addiction and how it affected everyone.

If these are your types of books I definitely recommend picking this up.


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