{"id":21599,"date":"2011-03-07T22:41:58","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T03:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/21599\/beautiful-boy-book-review\/"},"modified":"2011-03-07T22:41:58","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T03:41:58","slug":"beautiful-boy-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/21599\/beautiful-boy-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Boy: A Book Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hey folks!\u00a0 I had the privilege of reading one of the most personally significant books of my life here in 2011.\u00a0 I would highly recommend it for anyone;. if you’ve ever had to take on issues of addiction and recovery in your family or for yourself, this story will be of tremendous impact. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I had to read it as part of a class… and now, for that class, I had to write a book review.\u00a0 I share it with you as a blog. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Fifty miles and several hours to the airport.\u00a0 I was traveling on bicycle, foot, bus, train and airplane, heading south 2000 miles from one corner of the country to another. It was the holidays, and I was going to be with my family, for the first time in my new life, a life wherein a commitment to my recovery was even more important than was my previous dedication to intoxication.\u00a0 This was to be my first meeting with my family in sobriety.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I had two companions for my journey.\u00a0\u00a0 The first was an old friend: my video camera.\u00a0 The second was a\u00a0 book.\u00a0 I had picked it up a few days before in my desire to get ahead of my readings for the upcoming quarter.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve bought a lot of books for my secondary education.\u00a0 I think about 1\/3rd of the non-fiction half of my personal library comes from books I\u2019ve acquired as required for of one class or another.\u00a0 None of these of scores of books had the impact of the book I read on that trip.\u00a0 None of them were so personally relevant to my life and what I was doing at the time as Beautiful Boy by David Sheff.\u00a0 None of these books also were also #1 New York Times Bestsellers either.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t put the book down.\u00a0 As I read it, I though about what I had put my family through during my decades of substance addiction.\u00a0 Locks on the family homestead got changed.\u00a0 There were instances of emotional cut-off.\u00a0 Enabling happened too.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think anyone in recovery reading Beautiful Boy cannot help but reflect upon what he or she did to his or her own family.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\nAt the same time that I thought about my past, I also thought about my future.\u00a0 As a chemical dependency counselor in training, I thought about what I would do or say if I had Nic and David in my office.\u00a0 How would I help this family?\u00a0 The book is chock full of anecdotes of what professional addiction counselors talked about in this story; despite their best efforts, these professionals did not prevent Nic from relapsing.\u00a0 The very foundations of the vocation I am entering were questioned by the narrative of this book.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\nNic\u2019s story continues.\u00a0 That he fell back into the arms of substance use did not invalidate what had been done for him thus far, by his parents and by his addiction counselors.\u00a0 Ultimately, as I looked at the demoralizing impacts of relapse after relapse, I realized the effects of treatment are cumulative. His first, second or third attempt at recovery may not have \u201cworked\u201d, but they were not without value.\u00a0 Relapse need not be a part of recovery; it is also not the end of recovery.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve posted this video before… but this was the trip where I read the book I reviewed above…<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


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\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey folks!\u00a0 I had the privilege of reading one of the most personally significant books of my life here in 2011.\u00a0 I would highly recommend it for anyone;. if you’ve ever had to take on issues of addiction and recovery in your family or for yourself, this story will be of tremendous impact. I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393,14,28],"tags":[1114,81,950],"class_list":["post-21599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-family","category-health","tag-drugs","tag-joko","tag-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/friendburst.com\/blog-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}