Salon.com > Nic Sheff

Why can’t Hollywood get bipolar disorder right?

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:20:00 +0000

I’m not sure what happened exactly in the last 10 years, but apparently I tapped into a popular trend when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder back in 2003.

What I mean by that is, when I was first diagnosed, I’d never even really heard of bipolar as a mental illness before. I knew the Jimi Hendrix “Manic Depression” song. And I’d heard stories of how Francis Coppola was such a crazy genius back in the '70s, but how once he started taking Lithium, he lost his creative edge and ended up making movies like—well—Jack. Oh and of course, Nirvana had that “Lithium” song.

But other than that, I wasn’t super aware of bi-polar disorder in popular culture. Now hit TV shows like Homeland and Academy Award-nominated movies like The Silver Linings Playbook all feature bi-polar characters.

Bipolar disorder is very real for me. But it’s also completely manageable.

My own sober miracle

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000

I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard some asshole at an AA meeting telling some poor newcomer, "Hey, don't quit before the miracle happens." It’s one of the many seemingly meaningless platitudes repeated over and over again in 12-Step rooms.

It wasn’t a saying I’ve really thought all that much about, and when I did, I’d just think it sounded dumb. Still, at the same time, I guess I was sort of waiting around for some kind of miracle to happen. Not that I believe in God. But I figured if I worked hard enough, eventually something would come along. It's human nature.

And then, not that long ago, I guess it did come along.

But the truth is that there have been a lot of miracles in my life since getting sober. There are the two books I’ve written and the novel I just sold. There is the fact that I re-met my future wife after not having seen her for 15 years, though we were best friends throughout middle school and I was in love with her the whole time. There is the miracle of how much I’ve come to love my life now, after having been so fucking deeply unhappy for so very long. There is the miracle of my relationship with my family and my friends and two dogs and one cat.

Pain management

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:57:00 +0000

Most everyone agrees, at this point, that addiction is a disease.

Or at least a genetic abnormality.

In fact scientists are damn close to isolating the specific gene.

I know in my own case that it’s clear how that predisposition manifested itself the first time I ever got drunk. My friend and I were 11 years old. We stole alcohol from the bar of a rented ski cabin up in Tahoe, mixing small amounts of the different liquors in a Snapple bottle so the grownups wouldn’t notice any was missing. For me it’s an old story at this point—practically a legend. I drank some, he drank some. He hated the way it tasted and stopped. I loved the way it made me feel and drank the whole goddamn thing—and then I puked for like an hour.

Something in my brain was turned on that night after feeling the very first effects of that alcohol. Some switch had been flipped.

And, as I would come to learn later, that “switch” would get flipped on whenever I took drugs or alcohol into my system.

Because once I started, I couldn’t stop. There was no getting around that.

I regret everything

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:36:00 +0000

My poor little sister.

She's still just in high school, and she's already been through the addiction mill: my father (who is also her father) and I have both written books on the subject, we both go on national speaking tours talking about addiction, and she actually lived through my addiction herself. Then she was recently assigned a book about a crack addict to read for one of her classes.

Not only that but the crack addict (now a former crack addict) came to her high school and spoke and she’s supposed to write an essay about the book and his talk and her impressions.

Before writing the essay, she called me to talk it over. She said she was impressed with the book, but unimpressed with the author’s answer to a question one of the students asked him.

Do you regret being an addict, and all the things you did and went through when you were smoking crack?

His answer was simple: he regretted nothing. He was grateful, in fact, for all that he had been through. Addiction made him the man that he is today. He wouldn’t take back anything.

My non-addict wife

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Somehow it seems to bother her more than it does me.

Or, well, she’s the one who keeps bringing it up.

I’m not sure what brings it to her mind exactly.

My history, I mean—that is, my history as a drug addict, alcoholic and hustler. My wife and I were married over a year ago and I guess we both thought it would have gotten easier for her by now—which it definitely has—but she is still uneasy whenever an addict character is in some movie we’re watching, or I accidentally start telling a story that is connected with my using—which happens fairly often since, even though I’m 30 and have been sober for four years, my life was more or less consumed with either using, or trying to recover from using, from the ages of about 17 to 28. The fact of the matter is that a lot of my experiences are from times when I was in rehab, or some halfway house, or some even more sordid situation.

Of course, I try to edit myself. But it does slip out.

From recovering to recovered

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Writing a memoir about your drug addiction and having that be your only claim to any kind of fame has a few drawbacks I hadn’t counted on when setting out to write the goddamn book. Granted, there are worse things. But, unless I feel like lying, pretty much every conversation with a new person who asks the dreaded question, “What do you do?” ends up uncovering the fact that I am a former crystal meth and heroin addict.

Because the answer to what I “do” is that I’m a writer. So the logical follow up question is, “What do you write?”

“Oh, a book,” I say.

And then they ask what the book is about. It’s only natural.

So, thus, a new acquaintance is suddenly way more acquainted with me than either they, or I, had anticipated—or wanted.

Lessons from a celebrity rehab clinic

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 01:00:00 +0000

I’d been sober a little over a year when I got the job. That was the minimum requirement: You had to at least have a year clean if they were going to hire you. I had achieved a year clean off IV crystal meth and heroin, and I saw the job at the posh rehab in Malibu as basically the best opportunity I was gonna get. After all I was just 21 at the time — a college dropout who’d already been in and out of four different rehab programs. My last job had been working at the juice bar of a funky, not-too-clean health food store in one of the sketchiest neighborhoods in L.A. They’d paid me whatever minimum wage was back in the early 2000s and, believe me, it wasn’t enough.

But the chichi treatment center in the Malibu hills promised to pay more than twice that salary, and, besides, it would afford me a certain kind of cachet — one lacking in the kitchen of the health food store I had recently abandoned. I mean, I was gonna be working at this rehab full of celebrities. That was something I could tell people with pride when they ask the first question everyone always asks in L.A., “So, what do you do?”