“You know,” my mom says, “I am really angry at Nic. He’s hurt me and this whole thing has been terrible. But I know that I have made a lot of mistakes and so has Nic’s father. I want for me and Nic’s dad to both try and admit to some of the ways we’ve been unfair to Nic over the years. We have both been selfish with Nic, putting him in the middle of things that had nothing to do with him. So, as much as I don’t want to, I am willing to face that. And, Nic, I want you to know that you can say anything to me. I don’t want you to worry about protecting my feelings or your father’s or Todd’s or anybody’s. When you were little you always tried to make everyone happy. Then it was like one day you just exploded. I don’t want you to hold all that stuff inside of you anymore. It hasn’t worked for you and it hasn’t worked for me. I just want you healthy, Nic. That’s all I want.”
I hold her hand for a minute. I feel so grateful to her for everything she said. It’s like for the first time my mom and dad and I will be able to be really honest with one another. Annie has taught me here that every resentment I hold inside me eventually will fester and come bursting to the surface. I just want to get rid of all the anger that has been building inside me for all these years. I want to get rid of it in a way where I don’t end up hurting myself. It means so much to me that my mom sees this. It means so much to me that she says she wants to take some responsibility for everything. I’ve never heard my mom speak like this before and it gives me a lot of hope. I take her hand in mine and we both cry together.
The art therapy exercise we do is pretty simple. We have a piece of paper divided three ways and my mom and dad and I each get to draw in our own section. We are sitting on the floor and my dad is working with oil pastels and my mom has watercolors and I’m drawing with colored pencils.
As I watch my mom’s drawing unfold, at first I am a little wary. She has painted a nice little blue sky with clouds and a sunset. This seems so typical of my mom, just trying to run from anything difficult—covering it up with a happy exterior. I wonder how she could have shifted so quickly from a few minutes ago when she was talking in group. But then the dark colors come in. There are swirling storm clouds covering the blue and turning the sky black and threatening. In the middle of the darkness is a solitary red balloon, drifting upward, almost too small to be seen. I guess that is her hope, so insignificant-looking in the overwhelming storm. I am very sad looking at this.
My dad draws something that looks like a giant vein, with lots of red and orange and drops of blood. It looks like pressure and pounding and worry and pain. He pushes the pastels into the paper so hard that they keep breaking in his hand. I try to focus on my own drawing.
At first I don’t really know what I’m doing. I sketch a heart with veins and aortas and the different ventricles and things. Then I draw faces morphing together out of the heart, stretching up—screaming faces, terrified faces, desperate faces. And then, before I can even think about it, I write the words “I am sorry.”
I write it over and over and over and over again. The words fill the whole page. When I look up I see my dad staring at my picture. He is crying again.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him.
My dad gives me a hug, saying, “I’m sorry too. I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all this. I really am. I forget sometimes how hard this has been for you.”
I let him hug me and I don’t pull away.
“I love you, Dad. I love you, too, Mom. I really do.”
I want to just collapse I’m feeling so much right now. I feel love, sadness, hurt, gratitude, fear, hope, hopelessness, regret—so many conflicting emotions. As we end group I know I’m allowed to go out to dinner with my mom and dad, but I decide not to. I need the support of the community and my friends here. I can process everything with them and they make me feel so supported. I talk to James and Jim. We go to a twelve-step meeting.
Later, me and a bunch of people sit around the TV room and watch Labyrinth, with David Bowie. Everyone’s making jokes and I’m just laughing so hard—so genuinely. It’s a feeling I thought maybe I’d lost.
I laugh and eat popcorn and drink hot chocolate.
This feels more like living than anything I’ve known in a long time. I realize how hard tomorrow is going to be, but for now, I feel so thankful to be exactly where I am. I feel independent. I feel like my own person.
James sees me and remarks, “Jesus Christ, my friend’s become an adult.”
It seems to fit. I feel comfortable in my own skin. I feel like I’m able to claim my own person. At least I’m making a start. I’m learning to stand on my own.
EPILOGUE
It’s a few days before New Year’s and it’s gotten cold here. I’ve been living with a friend in Savannah for almost a year now. I actually drove cross-country with her twice before settling down here where she goes to school. We stayed in Yellowstone on the drive and I saw my first wild grizzly and black bears. We camped on cliffs overlooking the ocean and snuck into a hot spring in Calistoga.
Savannah is definitely not a place I ever imagined ending up, but it’s not so bad. It’s safe for now and I’m able to live much more simply here. And that’s what I’ve come to value more than anything—simplicity.
So I’m sitting here writing, still smoking too many cigarettes and drinking too much coffee—though I guess there are worse things. Our apartment is small, but I’ve set up a little desk in the corner and I’m listening to the newest Fantômas record as loud as I can take it. There’s a big tuxedo cat who probably hates the music lying on my lap. He’s basically on top of me all day when I’m working. My kitten, who I rescued from the Humane Society a few months ago, is chasing a sparkly colored ball across the floor.
The family of my friend who I live with here has taken me in. They live close and I just celebrated Christmas with them. They were so open and made me feel completely welcome. I really do stick out here in the South, but her family has never been anything but accepting of me. I can’t thank them enough.
It took me four months to complete treatment at the Safe Passage Center and I’ve been sober since then. Using just has no place in my life now and I can’t see that ever changing. The feeling of vacancy I always had really isn’t there anymore. I mean, I still struggle with depression and mania and whatever—but I guess I just don’t hate myself like I used to. I actually really like my life now and I’m trying very hard to live with honesty and integrity.
My friend is at work right now, so I have the cats to myself. There’s some leftover fried chicken in the fridge, so I cut it up and put it in the bowl for my kitten. She loves fried chicken.
I’ve been working on this book for more than a year now and have been trying to get some other writing projects together. I just finished the screenplay about zombies who take over a rehab and also a children’s story based on the characters I made up for Jasper and Daisy. My friend here has a little cousin who’s only fourteen months old. He’s too young to listen to my stories yet, but I still hang out with him all the time. For Christmas I made him a mix CD with all my favorite childhood songs on it.
It’s interesting because writing a memoir is really a foreign idea for most people I’ve met so far living in the South. It is so important here to keep family secrets private and a lot depends on never admitting to anything embarrassing or shameful. For myself, I’ve come to discover that holding on to secrets about who I am and where I come from is toxic. My secrets will kill me. If I don’t get honest about my life, I cannot have recovery. I’ve learned that from the twelve steps and I’ve learned that from my own experience. I need to admit to what I’ve done, who I’ve been. That is how I have been able to survive.
And though I have done many shameful things, I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of who I am because I know who I am. I have tried to rip myself open and expose everything inside—accepting my weaknesses and strengths—not trying to be anyone else. ’Cause that never works, does it?
So my challenge is to be authentic. And I belie
ve I am today. I believe I am.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you, Ginee Seo. I mean, thank you so, so much. You are really amazing and inspiring.
Thank you, Binky. Thank you for sticking by me.
Thank you, Debbie, George, Quincy, Jack, Cameron, and Liam.
Thank you to my dad, mom, Karen, Jasper, Daisy, Joe, Mark, Jenny, Becca, Bear, Nancy, Don, Susan, Lucy, Steve, Mark, Debbie, Joan, and Sumner.
Thank you, Randy, Susan, Sophia, and Carmine.
Thank you, Hillel, Shannon, Katie, and Spencer.
Thank you, Zan and Jace.
Thank you, Armistead, Terry, and Peggy.
Thank you, D. B.
Thank you, Sean.
Thank you to the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church.
Thank you to Glide Memorial Church.
Thank you to my friends at LHC.
AFTERWORD
Walking my dog this morning, I had this memory come back to me that I’d blocked out completely. That happens sometimes, you know—still, after more than two years off shit.
The memory was from when I lived in the apartment off La Brea.
Me’n my girlfriend had been up all night in our one room apartment off Franklin, shooting cocaine. I had to work the next day, but I’d passed out sometime in the morning, and I guess my girlfriend couldn’t wake me up.
Suddenly I jerked into consciousness and saw her staring down at me, her glossy blue eyes darting and unfocused.
“You all right?” she asked, voice stuttering.
“Huh? What? Why?”
“I couldn’t wake you up, so I just gave you a shot of coke. Are you going to work?”
I looked at my arm, and there was a line of blood dripping down it.
“Yeah,” I told her. “I feel pretty good. Let’s go take a shower.”
That’s the memory I got back this morning—hiking up through Griffith Park, looking out at brown haze endlessly clinging to the downtown skyline.
This sickness tightened in my stomach, crawling up and out my throat.
Where I’ve been, where I come from—it’s always gonna be with me. I’m a drug addict. That’s who I am. I shot cocaine and heroin and crystal meth off and on for six years. I took pills, mushrooms, acid, Ketamine, GHB. I even smoked crack. Drugs were my whole life and death and whatever. They were everything, and they took everything from me. Or, actually, that’s not true. It wasn’t drugs. It was me. I threw everything away. I was the coward, too afraid to face life without sticking a needle in my arm.
So how do I move on from that? How do I go forward?
I guess that’s the fucking question, right?
Ever since I can remember, I’ve had this pain inside me—this vacancy, this hole opening up wide. I always felt so alone, like I was this worthless little nothing. I guess the biggest fear I had in the whole world was that someone would see what’s inside of me and discover what an ugly, disgusting, horrible person I really am. So I spent a whole lotta time trying to do everything I could to escape those feelings storming inside me. I ran from myself—using drugs, exercising compulsively, trying to find validation through sex and relationships. None of it ever worked. I remained myself.
But, when I was growing up, the one thing that did help me not to feel so isolated and crazy was reading—especially books by authors who fearlessly examined and exposed their highly imperfect inner lives. Books like Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima; Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller; Try by Dennis Cooper; and, of course, the works of authors like Bukowski, Salinger, Hesse, Bataille, Iceberg Slim, and Murakami. These writers revealed the things that existed beneath most humans’ seemingly secure and confident exteriors. I suddenly realized, after reading their work, that I wasn’t unique—that my doubts and fears and insecurities were more universal than I could’ve ever imagined. Their words gave me strength. They gave me permission to start trying to accept my flaws, my darkness, my insanity. They let me know that it was okay not to fit in with everyone else—to be a sensitive person—and that others struggled just like I did. It was such a relief when I finally began to understand this. It was like I could breathe—maybe for the first time.
So reading became an obsession for me, and I devoted myself to discovering new authors and trying to teach myself how to write. It was actually in one of Herman Hesse’s books that I first read about the idea of art as a conversation. According to Hesse, each person’s work is a response to someone else’s work—a conversation that spans decades, or even centuries. When I look at an Egon Schiele painting, it affects me. And so when I write, that’s like my answer back—to all the art that has meant something to me in my life. It’s a cool idea and I believe in it.
Anyway, I’ve been inspired by reading to respond with my own work, and I’m constantly trying to participate in that conversation.
Writing Tweak was like that for me. I wanted to tell my story—to contribute to the conversation. And it was my life, too, so I knew there would be something cathartic in that, like that song where Yoko Ono just screams “Why?” over and over—releasing everything.
Now that the book’s finished and been put out there for everyone to see, I have conflicting feelings about what I’ve done. On the one hand, the process of writing everything down and sharing my story was like performing an exorcism—minus the projectile vomiting and my head spinning around. Actually, it was like a purging or something. It was totally a kind of therapy for me.
Going on book tour and talking with groups of people about my experience and listening to their stories was just like a continuation of that process. The readings and talks felt like being in groups at rehab. The level of honesty and intimacy that was shared with me was overwhelming. I think exposing our pain and insecurity and fear allows others to do the same, and that is very beautiful. Connecting on that level feels so much more meaningful than most human interactions I have in my life.
So all that’s been amazing.
And learning to handle criticism and negative, sometimes hostile, feedback has been super important for me in terms of developing strength and conviction in my beliefs.
But, looking back, well, I think the one thing that is hard for me to reconcile is the fact that I exposed other peoples’ lives in my writing. Of course, I tried to disguise their identities, but they know who they are. I’m not sure if their stories were mine to tell. I wrote about myself, but I exposed them. This is particularly true with the portrayal of my ex-girlfriend, whom I called Zelda in the book. She has suffered a ton, right? I regret very much adding to that and I can't help but feel some guilt for what I've done.
Of course, when I wrote Tweak I was more immature than I am now. I didn’t understand how sharing someone else’s secrets, even anonymously, is a violation of their right to their own story. I genuinely had no way of knowing that. It was only through the process of publishing this book that I began to see the error in my actions.
Other writers have done it, of course. Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski are the two authors I admire most who consistently wrote about the people in their lives, exposing their most intimate secrets. I respect them both very much, and I guess I partly used their example to go forward with telling these other peoples’ stories in my book.
Like I said, I feel fairly conflicted about this now.
I’m not saying I’d take it back. What I can say is that I’m committed to not doing it again. I want to focus on writing only about myself.
Maybe that’s a strange thing to include in an afterword, but I feel like it’s important to acknowledge what I feel like are my mistakes. That has become an integral part of my recovery.
So, that said, since publishing Tweak, I have relapsed. It was brief and not on hard drugs at all. I relapsed on pills that I had justified taking, but quickly saw how the obsession had taken hold of me again. Actually it was sort of miraculous that I got myself into treatment before things could spiral out of control. I think more than anything else, I understand now
that if I keep running from my feelings, I will never grow and, ultimately, I’ll fucking get myself dead. If I don’t figure out who I am now and learn to live with myself, I’ll never have any kind of life at all. I have to face my shit one day. The longer I wait, the harder it’ll be.
So I have about a hundred days clean again. I’m living with a friend in East Hollywood. I go to an outpatient program twice a week, and I have this totally amazing therapist. I’m in the process of getting on medication for depression, as well as for bipolar disorder. I have a dog that is just the best thing ever. Things are good—Well, a lot of the time.
Honestly, I struggle every day, but I am moving forward.
I opened the book with a John Lennon quote and, recently, there’s been this one song of his that I just play over and over. Sometimes it makes me fucking cry and sometimes it fills me with hope.
John’s voice is so beautiful, singing, “Hold on, John. John, Hold on. It’s gonna be all right.”
I have to believe that.
It’s gonna be all right.
I just know it will.
—Nic Sheff, Hollywoodland, 2008
Nic’s journey of disorder and recovery continues on his blog, New Dawn Transmission. Read on for a sample entry and keep up with Nic at nicsheff.blogspot.com.
#1
Hey, so I’m starting this blog thing. Basically I’ve just been encouraged by a bunch of different people in my life to keep sharing my experiences in recovery with everybody ’cause I’ve been a fucking mess recently and I guess that’s supposed to be helpful, or something. I don’t know. I guess it is helpful. I wrote this book, TWEAK, right? About my struggles with drug addiction—specifically IV crystal meth and, uh, coke and heroin and crack and all sorts of pills and ecstasy and hallucinogens and pot and alcohol and I guess just about everything.
So far I’ve gotten a ton of really positive fucking responses. It seems like there is something about sharing your insides with the world that gives other people strength and hope and helps them not to feel so alone.