Who is zelda in nic sheff's book tweak

Reflective Essay

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Nic Sheff’s memoir, Tweak: Growing up on Methamphetamines (2007), is his retrospective on the middle to end of his period of drug addiction. Nic is the son of David Sheff, who authored his own memoir on his struggle to help Nic stop relapsing. Together, they look at the epidemic of amphetamine addiction in the United States from the point of view of both parent and child, showing how both suffered needlessly, but ultimately managed to recover. Nic’s book is unique in that it provides insight into the inner life of a drug addict, also detailing his experiences in rehab, which his father was only indirectly privy to.

Nic begins by describing his first relapse before the time of writing. He doesn’t attempt to explain or justify his reasons for relapsing; rather, he writes stoically, attending mainly to the events that transpired, the environments that he passed through, and the reactions of the people around him. Before his final relapse, he experienced an entire year of unrelenting, severe depression. Though he was off drugs, he was unable to find a social foothold in the world of sobriety, depressed by lingering shame about his past (which others also saw as a legitimate reason for shame), and disadvantaged by his drug abuse record. He recalls feeling completely worthless, forced to rely on others for self-preservation.

Nic’s parallel addiction to the vicious cycle of obtaining validation from destructive relationships extended into his love life, in which a series of girlfriends each led to a unique relapse. His first relationship, with a childhood friend in recovery, Lauren, led to a domino effect of co-dependence in which she relapsed as well. Nic considers this his first of two formative relapses. Nic and Lauren squatted in her parents’ empty house alternating between heroin and meth. These hedonistic patterns soon led to overtly illegal behaviors, including theft and drug dealing, that only ended when Lauren’s parents realized what happened and intervened. They told Nic’s father, who sent him to rehab.

Nic details the great lengths he went to supply and fund his addiction and hide it from his loved ones. He prostituted himself for money and stole medication used to treat his girlfriend’s mother’s cancer, knowing that it would cause a high. He recalls memories of childhood in which he first learned about drugs, sexual behaviors, and their risks. In one memory, after wandering San Francisco with his father, he became acquainted with the AIDS epidemic that was spreading like wildfire through the gay community. Later, he accidentally burst into his father’s room while he had a woman over, and became terrified that his father had contracted HIV. His father addressed his worries by educating him early on about sexual protection.

Nic returns to his most recent relapse, describing also his relationship Zelda, a woman fifteen years his senior, divorced once, and extremely popular in Los Angeles for her looks. This created a perfect storm for Nic, who, with his low self-esteem, grew to rely on her social network for validation. His obsession with his connections followed him beyond the duration of this relapse and into rehab, where he was chastised for constantly referring to Zelda and her friends. From the lucidity of the present, Nic reflects that Zelda was an unfortunate product of a dysfunctional family environment and probably needed to go to rehab herself.

Nic describes his codependent relationship with Zelda in excruciating detail. They declare their love to each other while high and decide to get married with no concrete plans for their lives. They pawn off most of their personal effects for money to fuel the vicious cycle of drug abuse, and try more varieties of drugs. These include heroin, crack, benzos, and many they cannot even remember. The only reason Nic’s second relapse ended with an outcome other than death or jail was that his mother caught him in a psychotic episode in her garage, on his way to steal from her. She and David give him an ultimatum: either he go to rehab, or they pursue legal action and send him to jail.

With hardly a choice, Nic chooses rehab. When he finally accepts the program, he finds that it offers a wealth of knowledge about the destructive patterns he has been unconsciously following during his addiction. He gains insight into his dependence on sex and external validation. A psychiatrist diagnoses him with bipolar disorder; Nic’s knowledge of his chemical imbalance helps him understand that addictions are often not voluntary or well reasoned.

Nic’s parents, at the time of his writing, are still uncertain about his ability to stave off drug addiction forever. Nevertheless, he ends his book on a positive note, expressing that he feels he is finally observing his addiction from the perspective of a knowledgeable outsider looking back on it. Tweak is thus as much a memoir as it is a vindication of the human spirit in overcoming addiction.