'It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and nothing to do but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control. But control was something I'd lost a long time ago.' Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer to convince him otherwise. In a voice that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking, and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. He paints an extraordinary picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself.

Reviews

Sheff relates his personal struggle with drugs and alcohol in this poignant and often disturbing memoir. Paul Michael Garcia is the perfect choice for narrator; his stern and entirely believable voice captures the desolation in Sheff's tale. His reading is wonderfully underplayed, and necessarily so. Garcia becomes Sheff, offering a gritty and raw performance that demonstrates just how dire the circumstances surrounding Sheff's existence really were. A Ginee Seo Books hardcover. (Apr.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Gr 9 Up-This graphic and detailed memoir painfully depicts the author's addiction to methamphetamines and his tortuous, tentative journey to health. It is a companion to his father's seering and guilt-ridden memoir of witnessing Nic's gradual slide into drugs, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey through His Son's Meth Addiction (Houghton, 2008). As a child and teenager, Sheff lived with his father, stepmother, and siblings in a California home with much love and understanding, and it's not clear why he began his descent into drugs. He started drinking at 11, smoked pot at 12, and became addicted to methamphetamines (and other hard drugs) when he was 17. He blames his addiction on genes and maybe the trauma of a broken family. But it's clear from his anguished narrative that he simply was not at peace with himself and his environment. Sheff narrates his story with many flashbacks that document in excruciating detail the drug underworld and how he dragged others whom he loved and himself down into a seemingly bottomless pit of despair. The author, in recovery (though not for the first time), nonetheless ends his memoir on a note of hope.-Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.