Nic Sheff - Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines

The harrowing story of a decade of youthful drug abuse.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Riveting.

Playboy

Sheff details his downward spiral, and the reader feels his desperation.

VOYA

Graphic and detailed memoir [that] painfully depicts the authors addiction to methamphetamines and his tortuous, tentative journey to health.

School Library Journal

You begin to understand how love can miss its mark and spiral toward tragedy.

Reading Room

Searingly honest.

Booklist

Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Childrens Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

Copyright 2008 by Nicholas Sheff

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 2008923615

ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-0333-3
ISBN-10: 1-4391-0333-X

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

For Lee and my friend in New York
who took me in. You are both
beautiful, inspiring, powerful women.

You are the two people I respect
and admire most in the world.

Thank you.

How can I go forward when I dont know which way Im facing?

John Lennon

DAY 1

Id heard rumors about what happened to Lauren. I mean, I never even knew her that well but wed sort of hung out a few times in high school. Actually, I was sleeping with her for about two weeks. She had moved to San Francisco when I was a senior and we met somehowat a party or something. Back in high school it was just pot, maybe Id do some acid and mushrooms on the weekend.

But 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. Id worked hard those last three and a half years. Sure Id 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 . I was a great big brother. I got along with my dad and stepmom. I loved them. They were some of my best friends. So I just started smoking some pot and what harm could that do me anyway? Hell, my dad used to smoke pot. Most everyone in my family did. Our friends didit was totally accepted.

But with me things were different. In high school I was rolling blunts and smoking them in the car as I drove to school. Every break in classes had me driving off to get high. Wed go into the hills of Marin County, dropping acid or eating mushroomswalking through the dry grass and overgrown cypress trees, giggling and babbling incoherently. Plus I was drinking more and more, sometimes during the day. I almost always blacked out, so I could remember little to nothing of whatd happened. It just affected me in a way that didnt seem normal.

When I was eleven my family went snowboarding up in Tahoe, and a friend and I snuck into the liquor cabinet after dinner. We poured a little bit from each bottle into a glass, filling it almost three-quarters of the way with the different-colored, sweet-smelling liquid. I was curious to know what it felt like to get good and proper drunk. The taste was awful. My friend drank a little bit and stopped, unable to take anymore. The thing was, I couldnt stop.

I drank some and then I just had to drink more until the whole glass was drained empty. Im not sure why. Something was driving me that I couldnt identify and still dont comprehend. Some say its in the genes. My grandfather drank himself to death before I was born. Im told I resemble him more than anyone elsea long face, with eyes like drops of water running down. Anyway, that night I threw up for probably an hour straight and then passed out on the bathroom floor.

I woke up with almost no memory of what Id done. My excuse for the vomit everywhere was food poisoning. It scared me, honestly, and I didnt drink again like that for a long time.

Instead I started smoking pot. When I was twelve I was smoking pot every daysneaking off into the bushes during recess. And that pretty much continued through high school.

Lauren and I really never got very close back then. When I heard later that shed been put in rehab for cocaine abuse and severe bulimia, I guess it wasnt that surprising. Wed both been really screwed up all the time and I had a history of dating, well, not the most balanced girls. I remember being ashamed to bring her to my house. I remember not wanting my parents to meet her. Wed come in late, late and leave early in the morningwhispering so as not to wake up my little brother and sister. Maybe it was them I wanted to shield from Lauren the most. Or, not from Lauren so much as, well, the person I was becoming. I was ashamed of my behavior, but still I kept going forward. 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 Id lost a long time ago.

Anyway, Lauren was not someone I thought about a whole lot. When she approaches me, I dont even recognize her at first. Its been five years. She yells my name:

Nic Sheff.

I jump, turning around to look at her.

She is wearing big Jackie O sunglasses and her dyed black hair is pulled back tight. Her skin is pale, pale white and her features are petite and delicately carved. The San Francisco air is cold, even though the sun has broken through the fog, and she has a long black coat pulled around her.

So I thinkthink, think. Then I remember.

L-Lauren, right?

Yeah, dont pretend like you dont remember me.

No, I

Whatever. Whatre you doing here?

Its a good question.

Id been sober exactly eighteen months on April 1st, just two days ago. Id made so much progress. My life was suddenly working, you know? I had a steady job at a rehab in Malibu. Id gotten back all these things Id lostcar, apartment, my relationship with my family. Itd seemed like, after countless rehabs and sober livings, I had finally beaten my drug problem. And yet there I was, standing on Haight Street, drunk on Stoli and stoned out on Ambien, which Id stolen from the med room at that rehab.

Honestly, I was as surprised by my own actions as anyone else. The morning of my relapse, I had no idea I was actually going to do it. Not that there werent ominous signs. In the twelve-step program they tell you to get a sponsor. Mine was a man named Spencer. He was around forty, strong, with a square face and hair that stood on end. He had a wife and a three-year-old daughter. He spent hours talking with me about recovery. He helped me get into cycling and walked me through the twelve steps. Wed ride our bikes together along the Pacific Coast Highway, up Latigo Canyon, or wherever. Hed relate his own experience getting sober from chronic cocaine addiction. But I stopped calling him as often. Maybe I felt like I didnt need his help anymore. I seldom went to meetings, and when I did, my mind would talk to me the whole time about how much better I was than everyone elseor how much worse I was, depending on the day. Id stopped exercising as frequently. Id stopped taking the psych meds they had me ona mixture of mood stabilizers and antidepressants. Id started smoking again. Plus there was Zelda.