This book was alright... The style it was written in was unique, yes...but I'm not sure I was fond of it. There was a lot of summing up involved in it as well...he seemed to go into detail about using drugs and then just summed up the outcome, it was a little strange. Near the end of the book I had no sympathy for him it just vanished...he's very arrogant. In the end I pushed myself to really finish reading because I was already halfway through. In any case, it was an alright book...I did learn some things from it but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I totally enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it too. I enjoyed the author's honesty throughout the whole book that made it real, and worth reading. I learned a lot from this book even though I am a lot older than the author, I think he is an incredible person and a great writer, vivid and very interesting. I learned some things from him that I will keep for the rest of my life and share with my two sons. One who is an ex meth user and I hope for good. In fact, he is the one that told me to read the book after his father gave him "A Beautiful Boy by Nic's dad. I give this book the maximum stars!!!

This book was an honest, hardcore look at Nic's life as a drug addict. Nic was a talented, smart teenager who started drinking and taking drugs. This book describes in detail his life when he was using and in recovery. I read this after I read Beautiful Boy, and it was very interesting in that it filled in some of th gaps in Beautiful Boy. When Nic disappears for long periods of time in his father's book, he tells us what he was doing in Tweak.

Nic Sheff writes this book using his own language, the langueage he used when living on the streets and using. It is easy to read, but difficult to swallow. Tweak is a very scary book, because it is real. I highly recommend this book for every parent and every teenager that may think it is cool to try drugs.

I didn't finish this book. Not because I wasn't interested in the subject, but because the writing left me frustrated. I found the author's repetition of the phrase "or whatever..." to be very distracting. The book seemed to have been published after only one draft, and I didn't care about any person in it. Another "quirk" seemed to be a kind of laziness in the writing (though, as we get to know the author's tastes and heroes, it is understandable). Some examples of this are his constant use of the word "some" after such statements as 'it had begun to rain, or he had stopped crying or vomiting'. The same goes for "things". The word seemed to end every list of objects in the book. To me, these are small problems that could have been fixed by an editor. Perhaps, all involved were trying to portray the author as a scrappy Gen-Xer with no time on his hands to tune up his work, instead of keeping the reader at a distance by creating muddy prose. Fine, but after a hundred pages of this sort of thing, it wears thin. Mr. Sheff lost me, and therefore, I learned nothing from his tale.

I read Beautiful Boy and then Tweak and I found that the empathy I had for Nic went out the window when I read his personal account of his drug addiction. With his Father's book, I kept pulling for him to turn his life around. In reading his story, I kept hoping he would overdose and put his family and friends out of their misery. Be sure to read Beautiful Boy - you can skip Tweak.

Sheff has created a one of a kind dark memoir of his own life. The book starts off like any drug affiliated book: dark, despair and pain. Drug addiction can be a life-long struggle, Sheff has illustrated the horrors of addiction. Like any addiction, it's only fun for a season but this particular book takes you through a decade of use and sorrow. The only draw-back is the conclusion has not yet been written, which gives this reader hope that Sheff has come to terms with his past. A must read for anyone in the struggle of addiction.

This is one of a kind book. It is the kind where you really cannot read too long , but you cannot stay away from reading too long either.
It shows you the scary reality of our young generation who can easily get hooked to bad lifestyle and refuses to know how or when to get out of it. It is an amazing book

this book was honest and heartbreaking. A true account into all the complications of addiction.

I don't know of anybody that has battled with addiction so I got this book to help my understand. I heard about it on a local radio station when the author stopped in for a visit. This book really gives you an ides of what a person might do to feel their additions...It's unbelieveable but the author survived it all! Great read!

I should preface this by saying my sister is a recovering Meth and Heroin Addict. The stark contrast between what is available for treatment when you have parents with money and insurance is astounding but not surprising. I would have killed to have the resources to get my sister into the types of treatment that Nic had access to. In the end, it may or may not have made any difference because addiction is one of the few personal journeys that one takes with everyone they love in the front seat powerless to alter the direction.

Dealing with my sister's addiction and our addiction to her I truly believe that people will treat you as badly as you allow them and they will get away with what they can. I wonder if Nic always felt like he had a safety net knowing his parents had the insurance and financial means to afford his rehab once he had reached a bottom he was not comfortable with. Not saying this to minimize the complete and utter despondency that is synonymous with addiction but perhaps a different perspective when it comes to addiction and socioeconomic status.

Tweak begins at a fast and engaging for about the first 100 or so pages. During the first of Nic's description of his sobriety the book begins to lag and become repetitive and I start to wish there was a "Name-Dropper Anonymous" that Nic could attend and breathed a sigh of relief when his treatment facility suggested he spend the time not focusing on who he knows. During some points of the book he describes his situation with brutal honesty and at other points he glosses over situations that would have added an extra layer of depth and understanding to the book.

The lowest part of Nic's addiction appears to be at a point before his books started. I felt like to truly understand how low he had reached in his addiction it was important to read more about this period in his life as it affected him so greatly in the book and was only mentioned in an almost passing way. We read about the aftermath of his time as a prostitute but again the details of this time period were glossed over again lessening the impact of the book.

I was surprised to see who Nic decided to dedicate his book to. Perhaps, I am jaded after reading "Beautiful Boy" and dealing with the utter despair that a family member feels when an addict in the family is knocking on death's door with an uncontrolled and desperate vigor and you tying to do anything to slow their nose dive into hell and realizing there is nothing you can do but watch. The choice of dedication also left me with the feeling that we were missing more pieces of the puzzle to Nic's story.

I would absolutely recommend this book and his father's "Beautiful Boy" to anyone dealing with an addict in the family even with the books imperfections it is an insightful read and gives a sometimes powerful glimpse into the mind of addiction but also leaves a lot of unanswered holes and questions about Nic's life as an addict.

Written with a first-person on-the-scene journalistic style that allows its author/protagonist an eerie degree of detachment, Nic Sheff's TWEAK is the dark counterpoint to BEAUTIFUL BOY, written by his father, David Sheff. The elder writer's grief-filled memoir glows dimly like a distant planet of despair, while the son's account of the same events burns like an angry Mars.

Nic Sheff was an attractive, almost androgynous young man of great brilliance who felt empty and false inside until he began using methamphetamine. Then he became alive and whole. "It was like, I don't know, like everything else faded out." He changed from a youthful contender for the prizes of life --- a promising career as a writer, a hint of leadership, a quiet kindness that everyone noticed when he was a child --- to a street scavenger with no future at all.

At many junctures in Nic's tale, the reader wonders how he stays alive another day and what motivates him to get up and keep his body barely functioning long enough to torture himself once again by injecting meth, heroin, crack, or whatever he could get into his collapsing veins. He comes close to losing one arm to a horrific infection that smelled of death. He nurses a girlfriend through an overdose, saving her life by having the good sense to dial 911 --- but he doesn't draw any parallels between what happened to her and what could have happened to him. He loses every good job he ever has. He steals from his father, mother, stepmother and all their friends. He even robs his kid brother. He prostitutes himself, hanging out on the brutal margins of the gay bar scene, enduring any degradation for the magical few minutes that a high affords him.

Nic drifts downward, only occasionally straightening out under the vigilance of a treatment program. The book opens when he has just completed 18 sober months, and has a job and money in the bank. He runs into an old friend named Lauren and together they plunge headlong downhill, in a very short time using up every penny he has saved to feed their habit. He even gets "work" as a drug dealer, seeing it as a pretty easy gig. He winds up having a meal in a mission church he had volunteered at in grade school. "I know I felt sorry for them --- men and women wrapped in blankets on the hard concrete...I never in my life imagined being one of them."

After Lauren comes Zelda, rumored to be the real-life Lala Zappa, niece of the rock innovator Frank Zappa. It emerges in later therapy that Nic gravitates towards famous people and that Zelda reminded him of his mother. Zelda (called "Z" in his father's book) is just the sort of self-destructive, sexually insatiable, untrammeled addict who could help Nic in his non-existent career as a writer, and drag him into a pit of madness, danger and death. That she both loved and controlled him is evidenced by the many vignettes of their shared daily doom. When, skeletal and starving, he passes out while helping her move furniture into a van so the two of them could have a yard sale of her memorabilia to feed their addictions, "I wake up to Zelda shooting me up with some coke." They sleep through the day of the yard sale.

The exhausting cycle of rob, score, get high, rob, score, get high is finally broken when Nic gets caught breaking into his mother's place. His father gives him a choice: treatment or jail. He chooses treatment, and this time it works. Nic does not moralize or suggest that he has now chosen a better way of life. His simple statement, "Using just has no place in my life now and I can't see that ever changing," does not go very far, though it may strike a chord for its honesty. Maybe someone who has been as far down and as lost as Nic can't say more.

Nic and David are close these days. They were always meant to be, but Nic's addiction took away a lot of years they could have shared. Nic is working on living quietly and becoming authentic and true to himself, while David is getting back to work as a writer. They have been involved in some publicity tours that allow them to highlight the drug problem in America. They're both more steady and clear. Maybe it's the relief of knowing that tomorrow will be a decent day, and the tomorrow after that.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

For someone that repeatedly proclaims his writing expertise I was very disappointed with this book. It is a rambling, self-centered pity party. I read "Beautiful Boy" and thought that it was an excellent book that successfully portrayed the horrible struggle that parents have when their children start using drugs - the out of control aspect, the helplessness, the grief - this book really showed them all.

I thought that having a second book written by the son telling his side of the tale was an interesting idea, and I bought it because I was very curious to hear what Nic had to say about the same events. Compare how the father was seeing the downfall while Nic was actually experiencing it.

"Tweak", however, falls flat. I didn't come away with it with any better understanding of why a child of privilege would throw everything away on meth. There were no insights. I didn't even think it was very interesting, and I certainly didn't think it was well written.

Honestly, I think if there had been an editor for this book that actually made the writer refine his work it would have been a better story. Everything about the book just seemed so even handed. There were no ups or downs, no rush or climax, it was all just the same monotone voice. As it is I think there are much better books out there that deal with personal addiction. Nic didn't reach me. He didn't make me care. If anything I came away with the feeling that he was spoiled and selfish, not sympathetic towards his addiction at all or with any new understanding about addiction. Nothing new here.

Let me save you $10. Nic does drugs because he likes them. He complains about his parents divorce and how he was abandoned. He complains about his father and that he was raised more like an adult and didn't have a childhood. Then he praises his father for his parenting skills and his wonderful childhood. He can't find God. He thinks he found God. No, he can't find God. He sobers up. He relapses. He sobers up. He relapses. He is diagnosed Bipolar. Things make sense. He stops taking his meds and relapses. He has sex a lot. He hustles. He steals. He shoots up. He falls down. He shoots up some more. Complains about parents. Praises parents. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'll keep "Beautiful Boy" but "Tweak" goes in the Salvation Army giveaway pile.

I ordered this book along with the father's when I saw them on Oprah. I have shared them with my son who is only 21 and has been in prison for almost 2 yrs because of drug addiction. Because of these books he has opened up and we can honestly talk about how to set goals to stay clean once he is released. Just like the book sometimes you find out things that you can never imagine your precious child has gone through to get that high.

OK, I read it (groan). He painted some lovely characters but didn't resolve them, I was left thinking it was all about him, and I gather meth recovery is selfish(from his book).
I only wish he would go back to college, study modern history and sociology, and really learn how to write. I feel a bit ripped off for buying and reading the book, I was not enlightened at all, nor did I warm to him. I am lying awake still thinking it was a huge name dropping exercise ... "Mum and Dad were journalists, I was so talented, I went to Europe, I was so smart I got into the best colleges blah blah blah and then I screwed myself up". There was no backdrop to any of it, he doesn't even seem to realise that people his age going off to war because they haven't had the opportunities he had and know no better ... when he does feel out of touch with the world he needs to hook up with movie reviews... WHAT!? I am bored with his empty sexual prowess. Then he wept on the beach in Hawaii... (admitted to having a prozac moment). There is a much bigger world than his introspective journey. I sound bitter, but I found the book really narrow and stunted.

This book was so honest and left me with hope. I thought he was a strong writer and I can not wait for his next work.

Writing style clear and easy to follow. Some of author's insights were stunningly clear and appear honest. Sad and sickening was the realization of how many other people this addict/author has damaged, abused, destroyed, and otherwise taken advantage of in the process of his addiction.

A couple of times this reader got bogged down in the repetition of the author's days spent searching for, getting, and then using his drugs. The daily recitations became boring.

Worth a read to understand what goes on in the mind of an addict. Perhaps others can learn how better to protect themselves from the hell wroght by the addict. Perhaps not.

I read this book after reading "Beautiful Boy" and was eager to see what the other side of the story looked like. What Nic was experiencing was even more dreadful than his father imagined. Unlike other reviewers, I think Nic offers some insights, maybe tentative ones, into why he becomes an addict. As a former high school teacher and the teacher of a college class in young adult literature, I have to comment on the publication of this book by a young readers press. The book if legitimately and accurately full of drugs, sex, and very graphic language. I would suggest that school librarians be especially cautious before shelving this title. I defend the right of students to read this book and I think a lot will find this book interesting, but I am not sure it is written for them. I agree with other reviewers that the liveliest writing is in the drug use section. What more mature readers may see as appaling, younger readers might view as intriguing and inviting. As others have noted, Nic does seem to come out all right in the end. It may be a real challenge to make rehab as interesting as life on the street. I think this book would provide one valuable perspective for anyone who has to deal with those who are in the grips of addiction.

Having worked with many addicts, this book is an accurate portrayal of where addiction leads you. The author is lucky to be alive.

I read David Sheff's Beautiful Boy and wept. The thought of paying money to Nic Sheff for his side of the same story is a great struggle. The problem is that if children who have not yet tried drugs hear this (and other similar) stories, what will they make of it? People who overcome their addictions fail to make the point of the horrible damage drug/alcohol abuse causes. A child will weigh the possibilities and see someone like Nic who has emerged a published author, and therefore, an addict who can function and earn a decent living. The question then becomes, "If Nic Sheff (or other addicts in the limelight) can do drugs and still have a good life, why shouldn't kids or young adults try drugs? It would be phenomenal if Nic Sheff didn't spend his earnings from this book on drugs. It would be beautiful if Nic Sheff lived the rest of his life clean and productive and happy. I wish this for his family. But I just can not know that I have given him a penny toward possible further abuse and pain inflicted on himself or the people who love him.

I get that this is just a guy telling his story to anyone who may be intersted. And, I am interested. But I just can't do it.

What a wonderful book. Everything Nic expressed in here was so true.
I could not stop listening to this book. It was just so good.

This book scared me. It scared me because of all the drugs that Nic did and how he ruined his relationship with his family, just to get high. But at the same time I liked it, because it was so descriptive, like when Nic talked about how it felt to be high. Also when Nic realized that being sober was a lot better than getting high. I also liked how the story jumped around, like the flashbacks. What I didn't like about this book was how the story just ended, it just stopped. It never talked about if he stayed sober and how what encouraged him to write the book. I also didn't like how Nic acted. He didn't like to hear what anyone else had to say, about what he was doing wrong, like when Spenser and his dad told him that his girlfriend was a bad choice for him. And I didn't like it when Nics' mom call his girlfriend's dad and told him that they had both relapsed. That was a very mean thing for her to do.
I would recommend this book to older teenagers and most adults, because I don't think that younger teenagers would understand what Nic is saying about drugs.

I could not put this down after my husband handed it off to me. After mediocre memoirs, fake memoirs and memoirs about everything from ballet to dogs, I really just wanted a good old good down and dirty drug recovery memoir. This kid explains truly what it's like to feel when a drug addict is down and out, and the whole AA experience resonates all too well, along with dual-diagnosis. Read it. If you can stomach it.

This book really sucks. There's nothing about Nic Sheff's life story that hasn't already been covered in many other addiction memoirs.

The one difference here is nepotism, in this case, the addict is the son of an already published author who recently banged out a book on the same topic.

At least Daddy Sheff had some originality, as the first to address methamphetamine addiction from the perspective of the addict's parent.

Yet even Dad's book, Beautiful Boy, suffered from a major plot spoiler that also applies to the son's Tweak: you know from the outset that the kid is currently alive and sober. All suspense dies upon arrival.

Maybe this review reflects some of the bitterness I feel about the memoir genre as a whole. Too many of the book deals in this category go to inexperienced scribes who are banking on something other than writing skill and experience. All of this diverts opportunities from people who do know how to write well.

I read Beautiful Boy by Nic Sheff's father like a "How not to have your kid end up on meth" manual. When I finished I wanted to read Nic's version to see if he shared his father's stance on how he got involved with drugs and what might have helped him keep off drugs and what eventually helped him stay off of them. Of course neither of these books really provide an answer to all of those questions but they do shed some light on the insights of these two men. I found them both interesting to read, gut wrenching at times, and both of them at some point brought me to tears. Tweak, in particular, left me crying at the end when Nic and his parents were in therapy together. It was so touching to read about the pain that all of them had felt, and that they were still able to hold out some hope after all they had been through. I recommend both of the books, and like other reviewers, thought that it was best (as a parent, perhaps) that I had read Beautiful Boy first. Nic's book is more raw and detailed about the actual drug use, so it is not for the faint of heart, but I found his honesty in self-analysis to be compelling. I would and have recommended Tweak to others and it has stayed on my mind long after reading it - a sure sign of a book worth reading.

Although parts of this book were tough to read (from a sympathetic point of view)it was a real life view into someones battle with addiction... Nic describes the emotions, the feelings, the drive to score more drugs, the love he felt, the pain he endured. Definately worth reading especially if you or someone you love is battling with this drug or other addiction. It helped me to understand what they go through... and hopefully it will help them understand what we go through watching them fall.

After I finished reading Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, I stumbled across his son's account of the same time period. It was most interesting to see both sides of the same story. The father's story of his beautiful, smart son's demise into the hell of drug addiction was harrowing, especially if you are a parent or grandparent. How could this happen to a child who, although his parents divorced, seemingly had a happy, normal childhood? According to the son's account, however, his childhood was not quite as idyllic as his father seemed to think. Haunted by his fear of abandonment and exposed to his father's lifestyle (drugs, women), Nic's search for a way to solve (or avoid) what he perceived as his problems, while certainly not acceptable, at least seemed to give cause to what he did. If you have read Beautiful Boy, I would most certainly recommend getting the other side of the story by reading this book.

BORING BORING BORING,,
I HAVE DONE METH AND CRANK COKE,, BUT THIS BOOK IS ALL ABOUT PEOPLE WHO SHOT UP DRUGS,, MOST METH USERS SNORT IT,, SO I FOUND IT KINDA MUCH , and could not get into it,, I KNOW MANY A METH USER AND NOT ONE SHOTS UP,,NOT FOR THE AVERAGE DRUG USER

I really enjoyed this book, I couldn't put it down. I was fascinated with Nic's life/addiction and how something can overpower your mind and judgement. I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in a candid writer and the blunt reality of addiction and how it affects everyone that is involved.

I read Nic Sheff's Tweak after reading Beautiful Boy, which was written by his father, David Sheff. As I mentioned in my Amazon review of Beautiful Boy, my son is an 18-year-old addict and our lives have been turned upside down for the last 4+ years because of it. Tweak is gut-wrenching, very graphic, and very real. It certainly shows how a nice, highly intelligent kid can screw his life up pretty quickly. Be forewarned that a lot of the stuff described in this book is pretty hardcore. It will certainly make you wonder how anyone could end up in such dire straits. But, of course, addiction is a disease, not a choice. As the parent of an addict, this book affected me greatly. I'm sure it will affect you, too, even if you don't have an addict child. Be prepared to cry. A lot. I wish nothing but the best for Nic Sheff and hope that he can stay clean and sober. It took a lot of courage for him to share his story.

I just finished this book. It's amazing how much I learned about life issues that surrounds us all. Leaving all the lessons I got from the addiction and all its consequences , I got to learn more about family dynamics and relationships and God. Yes, God. Even though Nic does not believe in God he slowly starts to surrender his life to a higher power.

It's really well written, a page turner..I would recommend reading his dad's book first.

I really loved this book. Once I started reading it, I found it hard to put it down. I became really drawn into the book, hanging onto every word that was written. Absolutly loved it!!!

I found this book gave me added insight into the mind workings of an addict. That alone was very helpful. Understanding why and how an addict (or someone with a bipolar disorder) thinks made me more empathetic to them and their situation. If we assume we have full control and responsibility for our thoughts and actions, this book reveals that when we are not in control of our own mind or we are unaware of ourselves and our tendencies, we might not make good choices. I highly recommend this book to everyone, because most of us know someone with addictive inclinations and bottom line- who could all use more understanding and awareness! From a more protective/pessimistic viewpoint, this book can help you become more aware of thoughts and behaviors that are drug-induced, and you can know to steer clear of people and situations that might be unsafe. An excellent companion read is David Scheff's book called Beautiful Boy (he is the author's father.) I also applaud the author for his authenticity and courage.

I bought this book right after I read Beautiful Boy by Nick's father. I could not put this book down. I strongly recommend reading them both. You get both sides to addiction, the addict and the people who love them. I was sad when I came to the last page and I was done reading the book because I wanted more!

this is a guy who tells it like it is and was, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It would be good for former users or now using drug persons. He uses words that describes exactly how it was, I will listen to it again because once you start listening you want to keep going, and I know the second time around I will hear more.

I usually do not read this kind of book. I'm a psycho thriller fanatic, but my 16 year old son and his friends were talking about it, so...

I pray Nic is doing ok now, but the thrill seeker in me wanted family secrets, juicy details and vivid descriptions. I felt guilty for indulging in his life and for wanting more sordid stories when he was using. The mom in me is left wanting some answers (guess i'll read beautiful boy next).

I found the way he captured his mood swings and craziness very interesting - almost funny, but the book was just ok to me. It's not exactly a page turner, in fact I skipped a few. I had to put it down several times due to boredom.

I get that he has this self deprecating thing going on and I even understand why he detached himself. Unfortunately, by doing that he didn't draw me in. I was pretty indifferent throughout his story and never felt any sympathy, concern or connection while reading this book. Plus, I hate it when people reference celebrities but refuse to inform us who they're talking about (or even give a good clue to figure it out).

I'm the child of heroin addicts and the sister of a crack addict, so I appreciate Nic not playing the world's smallest violin. He seems to be a good, honest, decent kid - what happended? I just expected more from this story, which I'm disappointed to say I didn't get. I have no insight into that life and no idea what to do with the images now sketched in my mind (mostly due to my own imagination) from such an existence.

I sincerely pray he's still sober.

I read Beautiful Boy and was looking forward to reading Tweak. This book we quite disappointing. While there are a few moments of insight that held my attention, for the most part this is just a person sounding like "Boo Hoo" poor me, then boasting themselves. I was expecting more honestly and humility. Also the term, "You know?" was directed toward the reader and left hanging so often that the removal of this term alone might have shaved the space of a chapter from the book. All in all, I wouldn't recommend it.

I have read both "Beautiful Boy" and "Tweak", I must say these are two of the best books I have ever read. I think every parent should read these books. I have learned so much about the addiction, I understand things I never did before about my own son who for the last 2 yrs. has been addicted to meth, he was 14 when he started using and is now 16, he has been in rehab now for the past 6 mos. Nic's book has helped me understand what my son is going through, Thank you Nic for your honesty I admire you so much for writing this book , I know it was hard to admit to all you went through, but you never gave up on wanting to get straight. I have seen my son fighting some of the same battles as you have, trying so hard to be forgiven for the things he has done the horrible guilt the thousand of tears he has cried and the thousand I have cried and you and your parents cried. I believe this book will save many lives even kids like mine and I thank you and your father for pouring your hearts out in these books. I believe Spencer was right about the higher power being God and I believe God is using you to save lives, you know he works in mysterious ways. You are a beautiful boy! God bless you and your family.

I read the excerpt on Amazon and wanted more! I bought the book and again found myself not being able to put the book down. Then Nic got sober and the book got REAL slow. Now I'm not promoting drugs or anything, but the first part of the book - while he was on drugs - was a lot more gripping then the sober part. I ended up putting the book down and havent picked it back up since. When I have nothing to do, I'll finish it. I DON'T plan on getting the book by his father.

Written with a first-person on-the-scene journalistic style that allows its author/protagonist an eerie degree of detachment, Nic Sheff's TWEAK is the dark counterpoint to BEAUTIFUL BOY, written by his father, David Sheff. The elder writer's grief-filled memoir glows dimly like a distant planet of despair, while the son's account of the same events burns like an angry Mars.

Nic Sheff was an attractive, almost androgynous young man of great brilliance who felt empty and false inside until he began using methamphetamine. Then he became alive and whole. "It was like, I don't know, like everything else faded out." He changed from a youthful contender for the prizes of life --- a promising career as a writer, a hint of leadership, a quiet kindness that everyone noticed when he was a child --- to a street scavenger with no future at all.

At many junctures in Nic's tale, the reader wonders how he stays alive another day and what motivates him to get up and keep his body barely functioning long enough to torture himself once again by injecting meth, heroin, crack, or whatever he could get into his collapsing veins. He comes close to losing one arm to a horrific infection that smelled of death. He nurses a girlfriend through an overdose, saving her life by having the good sense to dial 911 --- but he doesn't draw any parallels between what happened to her and what could have happened to him. He loses every good job he ever has. He steals from his father, mother, stepmother and all their friends. He even robs his kid brother. He prostitutes himself, hanging out on the brutal margins of the gay bar scene, enduring any degradation for the magical few minutes that a high affords him.

Nic drifts downward, only occasionally straightening out under the vigilance of a treatment program. The book opens when he has just completed 18 sober months, and has a job and money in the bank. He runs into an old friend named Lauren and together they plunge headlong downhill, in a very short time using up every penny he has saved to feed their habit. He even gets "work" as a drug dealer, seeing it as a pretty easy gig. He winds up having a meal in a mission church he had volunteered at in grade school. "I know I felt sorry for them --- men and women wrapped in blankets on the hard concrete...I never in my life imagined being one of them."

After Lauren comes Zelda, rumored to be the real-life Lala Zappa, niece of the rock innovator Frank Zappa. It emerges in later therapy that Nic gravitates towards famous people and that Zelda reminded him of his mother. Zelda (called "Z" in his father's book) is just the sort of self-destructive, sexually insatiable, untrammeled addict who could help Nic in his non-existent career as a writer, and drag him into a pit of madness, danger and death. That she both loved and controlled him is evidenced by the many vignettes of their shared daily doom. When, skeletal and starving, he passes out while helping her move furniture into a van so the two of them could have a yard sale of her memorabilia to feed their addictions, "I wake up to Zelda shooting me up with some coke." They sleep through the day of the yard sale.

The exhausting cycle of rob, score, get high, rob, score, get high is finally broken when Nic gets caught breaking into his mother's place. His father gives him a choice: treatment or jail. He chooses treatment, and this time it works. Nic does not moralize or suggest that he has now chosen a better way of life. His simple statement, "Using just has no place in my life now and I can't see that ever changing," does not go very far, though it may strike a chord for its honesty. Maybe someone who has been as far down and as lost as Nic can't say more.

Nic and David are close these days. They were always meant to be, but Nic's addiction took away a lot of years they could have shared. Nic is working on living quietly and becoming authentic and true to himself, while David is getting back to work as a writer. They have been involved in some publicity tours that allow them to highlight the drug problem in America. They're both more steady and clear. Maybe it's the relief of knowing that tomorrow will be a decent day, and the tomorrow after that.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

This was an outstanding book. He was very dedicated when writing about his experience. I am now going to read the book that his dad wrote about the issue Nik faced and see how close it goes with his book. I would recommend this book to everyone.

This book was hard to read; I saw a lot of myself in this book, with my own food addictions and experimenting with other drugs in my twenties. I loved that Nic was able to bring us into his ego, and his need for approval and his sadness at never feeling good enough. I think this is a theme behind all addictions. I read Beautiful Boy, and I was moved by his father's effort to try and understand where his son was coming from; but in the end I thought the father was clueless and blaming. The addict is in pain, and it's more painful for a parent to try and tell them how bad they are for doing this to his/her parents. It just goes right back to the core issues the addict has in the first place. The child needs unconditional love and structure - yes - but if that hasn't been the case, then the parent and child need to search for their own help separately; not just expect the child to "snap out of it".

I enjoyed this book. At times I was reading in horror at the devistation that was happening to this young man. i am a mother who lost her son to drugs and I felt that this book really gave me another view of the disease. Thank you Nick for this insite into what was going on in my sons life. I now have a better understanding.

My ex was addicted to Meth, and always said, "You'll never understand until you try it". This book allows me so see life through an addicts eyes, but not having to use the drug myself.

This is a great book for anyone battling addictions or methamphetamines. It is a sad but compelling book about the downward spiral about methamphetamines use at an early age and the consequences of heavy use up until adulthood. I can't argue with the author's point at all.

The book helped me to learn more about the thinking of a hardcore addict. I learned a couple of things that my son hadn't already taught me -- the hard way. I liked Nic's open, honest, and direct style. What also makes for interesting reading is that Nic has identified some of his demons. The reader can identify a few more.

I read David Sheff's "Beautiful Boy" a couple of weeks ago, and I couldn't wait to read this companion book, written by David's son Nic, to see what Nic's take was on the whole thing.

"Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines" (325 pages) brings the memoir of Nic Sheff, on what it was (is?) like growing up being a drug addict. The book is not written in a straight chronological order. Instead, it jumps in at a point where Nick gets kicked out of his family's home and the first third or so of the book retells the next two weeks as Nic descends into deeper and deeper hell and drug addiction. Nic spares no details, and this is not for the faint of hearts. The rest of the book chronicles the following 2 years or so, and it is an endless up and down. When you read it, you simply wonder why anyone would want to go or live through this, again and again? Nic expresses remorse and sorrow, and towards the end of the book it appears that he has finally turned the corner. I was almost going to say "turned the corner, once and for all". But that surely would be an exaggeration. One simply can't ever know. For all we know, Nic has fallen off the band wagon again as I write this (although I can only pray for Nic and for his family and loved ones that this is not the case).

"Tweak" is not the first book that dives into the genre of drug-addiction survivor memoir, but it is well written, and a page-turner. Quite frankly, I couldn't put the book down, even thougb I've never been in that kind of situation (or maybe because of it). The amount of details that Nic is able to recall and describe on what he went through, despite his addictions, is simply amazing. And "Tweak" definitely does a tremendous job as a warning for anyone who even might be tempted in the slightest. In all, both David Sheff's "Beautiful Boy" and Nic Sheff's "Tweak" are highly recommended, and if possible should both be read.

Yes I read Beautiful Boy first, but I am a grown up. Read them in any order, but they belong together. While Tweak takes you up and down and through a small part of the landscape (over and over and over) in gritty detail, Beautiful Boy gives you a birds eye view and a global sense of where in space, time and emotion this is all happening.

That said, I have to admit that this was the most Terrible and Awesome (in the archaic sense of the words) pair of books I have ever read. They caused me great pain, but also gave me great insight, and for that I am very thankful to both authors... and I will say what I said on the Beautiful Boy review:

Nic was seeking a sense of wholeness and a sense of peace. He wanted to be a person who exemplified something he could not quite figure out, and he wanted to stop feeling pain. He used drugs as a short cut to get to this place. And as a result he lost everything. Yet when he did the hard work to find out that he was in fact a whole person all with in himself, and he could reach with in and experience his own peace, the need for drugs slept.

When you stumble across the answer to a question you never asked, the knowledge may pass you by, or at worst strike you as odd. But when you gain the answer you seek (here finding a sense of a whole person or a sense of bliss and peace) by cheating, or a short cut (in this case drugs), the result can destroy you. You always sacrifice something for knowledge (time, opportunity to do or know something else, etc). But when you choose the sacrifice and go through the struggle for understanding, in the end you gain, learn and grow. If you jump ahead to the end, you no longer get to choose what you are going to give up, the price is higher, and you gain nothing from the glimpse you gain of the answer.

This book was compulsively readable. It was fascinating to peek into the addicts' world of desperation to do anything to get the next fix. Nic Sheff's life on the street was quite harrowing and depressing. One review stated that Nic makes one bad choice after another. This surely is an unfair assessment because when you're high, you cannot make sound decisions most of the time.

Through out the whole book, I kept asking myself, "Where the hell are the parents?" For example, Lauren's parents were (as they were portrayed to me) rather passive about her drug problem. Nic's parents almost gave up on him. I am sure that it's emotionally, psychologically, and financially draining for some parents to go through with their addict children; however, in this book I did not see a lot of determination or perseverance from the parents. Yes, I need to read Nic's father's book - A Beautiful Boy.

Some of the details were very vivid for a drug addict to remember. Funny how memory works! Or perhaps I am too paranoid with the wave of pseudo-memoirs (James Frey, Augustine Burrough, Margaret B. Jones, etc.), and I am a tad leery of some of the details that seem to be forced.

Overall, it was a fast and fascinating read.

Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines While perhaps entertaining for the armchair voyeur, Tweak is inherently unhelpful to those suffering from addiction, or to their families and support systems. What Tweak does provide is insight as to how many millions of chemically dependent people are so poorly served by traditional group treatment programs; programs that all but ignore the physiological components of addiction and rely instead on folklore and punitive, authoritarian measures to address a complex problem. Perhaps one of the causes of long addiction term is addiction treatment itself.

For those suburban armchair quarterbacks that "understand" urban issues by reading the newspaper, this may be an interesting tome. But the amateurish writing style proves the brilliant writing capabilities of James Frey who did a much better job of creating a pseudo-fictional insiders view of the life of an addict.

I don't know that I will ever read this book. I found it to be too depressing at this time in my life. However, I do realize the life of a drug addict is pretty depressing.