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| Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (Thorndike Press Large Print Literacy Bridge Series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Nic Sheff
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  87 reviews
Sales Rank: 785564
Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Lrg
Reading Level: Young Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 543
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 1410409422
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.8640092
EAN: 9781410409423
ASIN: 1410409422
Publication Date: September 3, 2008
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Product Description
Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. 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 in California 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. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture for us of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself. It's a harrowing portrait -- but not one without hope.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 82 more reviews...
Journey Into Addiction, Good Sequel to "Beautiful Boy" February 25, 2008
103 out of 107 found this review helpful
****
This book is much easier to understand if you read the author's father's book, also recently published, called "Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction" by David Sheff. By reading his father's account of the same time, you understand from a parent's perspective just what is going on with Nic Sheff. You understand how brilliant and talented Nic is (he will not tell you this in his book) and you understand what this novel explores---his descent into methamphetamine addiction, how he lived for many years, how he squandered his potential by avoiding dealing with life, and the consequences in his life and in the lives of those he loves. Once you know more about who the young author is, you can appreciate his book so very, very much more.
The author is honest and transparent about the life he has lived as an addict, and the book is worth reading for this alone. Not many of us who haven't been through it can imagine what an average day is like for a meth addict, and this book shows us that. The insight this book truly gives you is what goes on inside an addict's mind, and how an addict views life and circumstances---very differently from a non-addict. Many of the terms may be confusing to those of us unfamiliar with drug culture (for example, "tweak", "rig", "push off") but again, they are explained in his father's book "Beautiful Boy".
So, read "Beautiful Boy" first from the parental perspective---don't miss it---and then, if you are still intrigued, as I was, follow up with "Tweak" and venture more deeply into the mind and life of the addict---who eventually becomes a likable person to the reader, not just an intensely selfish and initially totally unlikable addict. The author is courageous in sharing his life so openly in this book. I think it will make an impression upon you and leave you with a read you will not soon forget.
Recommended, especially after reading the "prequel".
****
 Don't Go Into That Closet! March 9, 2008
36 out of 39 found this review helpful
First off, I should say that I'm not one of those "I read it cover to cover in one day" kind of readers. I hear people say "I couldn't put it down" when describing a book and wonder what kind of life - obviously devoid of things needing to be DONE - they live.
That said, I read "Tweak" - cover to cover - in one day. I couldn't put it down.
I've had friends addicted to meth. I know that meth's grip is insidious and tenacious - that the predictable and almost-methodical way it destroys everything in a person's life is almost viral in nature. But seeing this "inside look" at how a meth addict perceives his addiction, his drug, his life, and the destruction of everything perceived as valuable - occurring right before his eyes... it's a compelling, haunting narrative.
The most striking thing for me in Nic's story is how at the very bottom - when virtually all is lost - the only thing that remains is the most sober of thoughts: "it's time to get clean". And at a time and in a condition where no hidden reservoirs of strength remain, the fight of a lifetime begins.
Watching Nic's recovery is like watching the heroine in a horror flick walk (usually backwards... go figure) into a closet where the slasher villain is lying in wait to kill her. You recognize the villain and the precariousness of the situation long before Nic does - and you're screaming "don't go in there" - because by this point, you see how far he's come and you're rooting for him to make it and you see the disaster about to happen. It's interesting that Nic's father (who also writes "the parent's perspective" of his son's addiction in Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction) is involved in the production of horror movies, because his story has so many elements of a great horror movie.
There are many heroes in this story aside from Nic - his family and his sponsor (Spencer) chief among them. To open yourself up to participating - emotionally investing - in a life with someone who repeatedly has shredded all sense of normalcy, safety and comfort - that takes a healthy dose of courage, perseverance, and love. Those are the hallmarks of every great hero, and his father, step-mother, mother, sponsor (and his wife) bear all of these hallmarks.
Read this book to reaffirm your faith in the strength of the human spirit - its dogged determination to survive, its desire to thrive and its capacity to forgive. Give this book to the young people in your life to instill an honest, powerful image of how drugs can destroy a life and inflict pain and sadness on everyone connected to that life.
But be prepared to lose a day, because you're not going to want to put it down.
 Could be a good book -- but is so disjointed that it is impossible to follow. February 21, 2008
24 out of 56 found this review helpful
This is a frustrating book -- it has elements of a good book within it. However, the narrative is so disjointed and poorly constructed that it is difficult to tell if the book is supposed to be non-linear or just a poorly-done linear storyline. Perhaps the author was attempting to replicate the hyperactive mind of someone on methamphetamine. Whatever the reason, the story was so hard to follow that it took a force of effort for me to read past the first ten pages.
The book resembles "A Million Little Pieces" in that it is a mix of novel and memoir providing a raw account about a young twenty-something year old man abusing drugs, while selling both drugs and his body as a male prostitute, and generally acting like a despicable person to line up his next dose of methamphetamines and other drugs. Oh and the protagonist's name is the same as the author's name.
There are some glimmers of a fascinating book in here. The prose is straightforward (even if there are far too many confusing flashbacks). Too bad the glimmers are buried in a book that was crying out for a solid editor.
Tweak February 6, 2008
23 out of 26 found this review helpful
This book was wonderfully written, I was unable to put it down. The author, with all honesty, graphically takes you through the stages of addiction and exposes himself and his struggle to lead a sober life. I wish him the best in his sober life and hope that this book helps others, as much as it helped me, to understand the darkness of addiction.
Not A Victim, Not A Hero, Just A Man... April 13, 2008
17 out of 19 found this review helpful
A few weeks ago, I purchased both Nic Sheff's memoir "Tweak (Growing Up on Methamphetamines)" and his father's counterpoint "Beautiful Boy (A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction)." I set them both aside, going back and forth in my mind about with which one I should start first, but ultimately I put off reading them both until a day I could read them back-to-back, uninterrupted, and just immerse myself in the Sheff family's world. I expected to be a bit biased toward Nic's telling of events, but I never in a million years could have imagined just how much I would find myself nodding along and connecting to the very internal issues that lead to and continue to feed his addiction.
Nic Sheff spent much of his young life hanging out with his writer-father at gallery openings, dinner parties, and VIP events; he spent more time with adults than he did children his own age and therefore was in a rush to grow up, but however he tried to emulate said adults on the outside, on the inside he was trapping himself in a perpetual state of adolescence that would come to haunt him in his later years. Nic's parents divorced when he was young, and both subsequently remarried. His father went on to have two more children, whereas his mother would just have constant fights with her new husband-- fights that got so loud Nic would run into the tv room and blast an old movie, to drown out the sounds of the screams and yelling. By the time we actually meet Nic, he has already been in and out of rehab, though (all of the aforementioned and more comes out as exposition to fill in the holes later in the story), and he is on his way to San Francisco to partake in yet another bender. This time he ends up dealing, too.
Nic describes his descent into drugs with enough detail to make his readers cringe (like when he describes the abscess he develops on his arm due to a dirty needle), but he is never gratuitously graphic. Nic is never preachy, in order to attempt to scare kids off trying drugs, but he doesn't glamorize them either, even when he talks about the famous people (all names have been changed) he meets during such exploits. Instead, he merely lays out the facts of who he was and what he did, and in reality, he could be any one of his readers speaking. While the people he met along his journey and the way in which he started taking his drugs and then spiraled, got sober, and relapsed (lather, rinse, repeat) are specific to him, the mentality with which he approaches his addiction and his life with it is universal. The feelings of alienation, inadequacy, and general discontent could be ripped from the pages of any teenager's diary. He describes his struggles with his appearance, with coming from a tumultuous home life, his obsessive need to put himself in competition with others, and even his misguided belief his mortality could never be tested (in that "it could never happen to be me" oh-so-common way) with refreshing frankness, as if he can look back now and see it was all just an obsession. And it is in that obsession that he is most vulnerable but also ironically most accessible because we can all share in and relate to that personality trait; it is just more severe for some than others. And without naivety, denial, or just bold-faced lying, there is no one who can say he or she does not obsess over something, and if you think you can, then that notion will be more detrimental than crystal meth.
Nic talks a lot about his outlets: he always had drawing, writing, an interest in movies, his younger brother and sister; hell, he was even on the swim team! But all of that took a backseat to his addiction-- and not just to narcotics. "Tweak" looks at a few of Nic's close relationships-- from his AA sponsor whom he treats as a surrogate father to a woman with whom he had an affair and still carries a torch-- and in each one, Nic attaches himself quickly and spends all of his time with that person. That kind of dependence is an addiction within itself; he feeds off the other person's energy and spirit for the same high he gets from his drugs, and it often blinds him from the person's flaws or problems. He held that woman on such a high pedestal he couldn't even tell she started using again, even though as an addict the signs were all right in front of him (I use the past tense because I hope he has put her and his old life behind him now and for good, but only time will be the real test).
Nic is a beautifully poetic writer, and the honesty with which he opens his life and his soul to strangers in "Tweak" speaks volumes for him as an artist. He doesn't ask for pity or even empathy; he just writes from the heart. And he may always feel a little lost-- he may always feel a little on the outside of things-- but looking through history, most true artists did. What makes them channel their energy and passion into a form like writing or painting is often the feelings of not fitting in with those around them. Instead of diving down a rabbit hole of despair and trying to make the wrong kinds of people like him (as he has already tried and which were neither particularly successful or healthy), Nic has his stories, and in the end, that's all he needs as salvation.
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