Beautiful Boy

During another visit to rehab, Sheff and Karen learn about “the ‘addicted family’” (174), illustrated by a mobile in which figures float around a central figure representing the addict. Sheff learns that the “figures dangling off to the side represent the kids and Karen, in the periphery, helpless, but inextricably tied to the moods and whims and drug-taking of the central figure” (174). 

Another figure “hangs between them—me. I am an enabler, propping Nic up; making excuses for him; bending over backward to care for him; trying to protect Karen and Jasper and Daisy from him, and yet also trying to keep them all connected to one another” (174). The speaker explains, “‘[f]amily members’ moods become dependent on how the addict is doing […] [and] people lose their identity because nothing matters except their addicted spouse or child or parent or whoever it is. There is no joy left in their life’” (176). 

They meet Nic for lunch and he explains, “‘All the God talk. I can’t get past it’” (176). Sheff tries to “offer a way that he can conceive of a higher power” (177), suggesting morals and principles as an alternative to God in this role.