Shannon Abrams
Tweak Book Review
Kines 445 As cliché the phrase is, reading the novel, Tweak: Growing Up on Mthamphetamines, was like being on an emotional roller coaster. For the most part, the book was predictable. It would make sense that a book about addiction would focus on a person’s drug use and how they recover from it. However, I was really distraught, like tears rolling down my face and fuming with anger, when Nic relapse after a year of sobriety when he was together with Zelda. In general, I am in empathetic person. I felt like I was on Nic’s side for most of the novel. But, once he relapsed, I lost respect for him. He had everything going for him and he acknowledge that. He had his family, Spencer, a job, exercising, and a hobby- writing. Getting emotional, annoyed and angry at Nic for destroying himself and the people around him is probably a fraction of what Nic’s loved ones felt when they found out Nic was using again.
Also, the conclusion of this novel was unfulfilling. The ending was anti- climactic. As a reader, I felt like I needed a confirmation of Nic’s sobriety and health. He ends by stating, “I’m learning to stand on my own” while still at the Safe Passage Center in Arizona. That left me assuming “O.K, so I guess he is sober now and his life is happily ever after?”, and the epilogue reassured my assumptions by having a positive outlook on his sobriety and saying, “I actually really like my life right now and I’m trying very hard to live with honesty and integrity”. But, after reading the last few pages of the afterword, it was shard that Nic has relapsed again after his stay at Safe Passage Center. It left me really upset again to see him fail after doing so well. I did not want to read 300-something pages to be left feeling infuriated.
However, Nic’s failures can be attributed to his mental disorder. It is a very neat connecting Nic’s psychological problems to everything I have been learning thus far in my abnormal psychology class. In the abnormal psychology, we learned that certain diseases a more likely to be present at the same time in a patient, known as a comorbidity. In Nic’s case, he suffers from substance abuse and bipolar disorder. It is apparent that Nic has a very obsessive personality, even before Nic gets diagnosed with a severe form of bipolar disorder later in the book. Nic acknowledges that there is something abnormal about him because he expresses that “none of them seem as crazy obsessive about everything as I am. I turn from these extremes of feeling on top of the fucking world- to feeling so despondent”. Nic would obsess over exercising, pleasing people, and being accepted by other people. Drugs were just another part of his obsession. Also, drugs were an escape from Nic’s mind which kept racing with thoughts. Nic admits that “shooting drugs was all about not having to face my life- not having to live in reality”.
As soon as I completed the novel I searched online what the author, Nic Sheff, looks like. I wanted to compare what he actually looks like to what I thought he looked like from the description of himself unfolded in the novel. I imagined Nic to be scrawny and lanky, messy looking, and lost. Throughout the novel, Nic lacks self-confidence. It does not dawn on Nic how much he does not value himself until he enters the Safe Passage Center where he must relearn to love himself. Once I saw what he actually looked like, the first thing I notice were his enormous eyes. His eyes really struck me because Nic’s father remarked “you have life in your eyes again” when he first saw his son in the rehab center in Arizona. I couldn’t help but think what Nic eyes must have looked like when he was under the influence. After viewing the pictures of Nic, I thought he would have looked more like a poster child for a drug abuser, but seeing what Nic actually looked like put into perspective that anyone can abuse drugs. There are no certain criteria about who will misuse drugs. Nic grew up in a “privilege” environment with many opportunities in front of him. Nic’s parents were financially well off, and had. Nic was exposed to art, music, and sports growing up. He has the opportunity to get a college education. Yet, Nic still became a drug abuser despite having the opportunity to succeed in life.
I am really glad that I chose to read Tweak for this book report and am excited to read the father’s perspective of his son’s addiction problem in the near future. I chose to read Tweak first because I wanted a first-hand understanding from the abuser of why he started and got addicted to drugs. Nic Sheff is a genuine writer. He does not really blame anyone and accepts that he is one to blame. From reading Tweak, it is understandable how Nic’s environment has been a major factor to Nic’s use of drugs. From an early age, Nic was inappropriately exposed to thing that most children are not exposed to. Nic talked about going to movie premieres with his Dad and watching people do drug. Nic even mentions how his Dad was once a drugg addict to who has been to a sobriety center. I am interested in reading about Nic’s father perspective about this and am wondering if the father owns up and talks about his influence on his son’s substance abuse.
This book was very fascinating and a detail, personal story of Nic’s substance abuse and mental disorder. This book fits well into this class and this book would be a good read for anyone taking abnormal psychology or a biobehavioral health class. I believe this book will be good for a class in my major, biobeahvioral helath, because we learn how people’s health should be approached from a holistic view. Clearly, Nic’s substance abuse stems from environment, his disorder, and perhaps even genetics since his father also abused drugs.