Beautiful Boy: Addiction

Beautiful Boy is essential viewing if drug addiction (yours or someone you care about) is part of your story. This heart wrenching true story is refreshingly untouched by the glamour brushes of Hollywood and really is a must see for anyone touched by the drug addiction epidemic. Directed by  Felix Van Groeningen's, the drama was created from a merging of two memoires: Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy, written by David Sheff about his journey being the father of Nic a Crystal Meth addict and his broader research into drug abuse and treatment (in the USA); and Nic Sheff’s, Tweak: Growing up on Crystal Meth. There is also a book, with the same title as the film, combining the Father-Son memoires.

Over the years, the film industry has had a regular sprinkling of films that have in their ways spoken to the topic of addiction: When a Man Loves a Woman; Thank you for Sharing; Trainspotting , to name a few. What stands out for me about Beautiful Boy, apart from the absence of Hollywoodness, is the exquisitely portrayed heartbreaking relationship between father and son and how Nic’s addiction, tears through the family like a cyclone. He is in and out of recovery, relapse and treatment centres and when he’s using, Nic is often the oblivious one, lost in his world of drugs and alcohol and in more lucid moments shattered by the shame he feels being such a disappointment. His father (and mother) is consumed with trying to save Nic’s life and rescue him from addiction; and in turn has no quality time of energy to offer his compassion-fatigued and incredibly supportive second wife. And then there’s Nic’s two young siblings, who just want to hang out with their older brother and have fun, but in reality, are more often than not, reeling from the chaos and dysfunction Nic’s addiction brings.

And this is how it is. Welcome to the family illness of addiction. No-one gets out unscarred. I don’t want to offer a reportage on the film. If you have, or anyone you care about has, drug addiction issues, or if you are simply interested in the addiction epidemic, just watch it. This film shows how a family comes to terms with the painful realisation that (Al Anon teaching), we aren’t the cause, we can’t control and we can’t cure another’s addiction.

I bought a copy (which can also be rented) from Apple TV, but there are likely other ways to view out there.