beautiful boy
I finished reading Beautiful Boy tonight (and yes, for those of you keeping track, I did read the entire book whilst at Borders/B&N ;p).
I’ve read a lot of memoirs about addiction. A Piece of Cake is one of my absolute favourites; Smashed and Blackout Girl are good too. And Party Monster (though the primary focus isn’t addiction) is easily amongst my top books/movies. I’ve grown up surrounded by addiction and mental illness and it’s kind of like my substitute for the whole group therapy mentality — the whole “you’re not alone” aspect.
Anyway. This one was different than most. Most addiction memoirs are a fairy tale in comparison — downward spiral into complete oblivion, realization that rehab/AA are the answer, and they live happily ever after. The end. Obviously, it’s not that simple, but almost everything I’ve read is fairly black/white like this — they have a problem, they get treatment (though it might be difficult) and that’s that.
Beautiful Boy, though… the narrator’s son goes to rehab. Stays clean for months and gets his life together. Relapses. Goes to rehab. Stays clean for over a year and is living well. Relapses. And the cycle repeats over and over, for years. The book is recent (published this year) and he’s still in this cycle today.
Idk. It was just kind of a new perspective for me. It makes sense, and I know that addiction like that is entirely real. But I don’t know anyone who’s been to rehab three or four times. The addicts I know in real life either:
a) continue living with their problem without treatment
b) get treatment and abstain afterwards fairly successfully (of course, they might slip up, but not enough to get back to the point where rehab is necessary again)
So it’s still that black/white mentality that I’m familiar with. I’m still trying to process this book against my established mindset. Interesting read, though.
