Nic relapses again and returns to treatment

Nic relapses again and returns to treatment in an episode that moves from a hidden, accelerating drug binge to a break-in at his mother’s home and, finally, a reluctant journey into rehabilitation. The relapse exposes the limits of promises made while high: Nic insists he will stop, but his behavior soon puts his health, housing, relationships, and freedom at risk. The crisis forces his family to confront the danger directly and ends with Nic accepting treatment far from home.

The relapse and its rapid consequences

David Sheff first hears the crisis in Nic’s voice on the answering machine in Inverness. It is brittle and breaking up; when David calls back, Nic answers on the second ring, crying and speaking with a slur. He says he wants to tell the truth. Three days earlier, he and Z. were at a party where she did a line and asked him to join her. Nic says he did not want to let her go out alone. Z. was the woman who had broken his heart after their earlier relationship, before his previous relapse; now they are together again, and Nic has moved from his new apartment into hers.

What began at the party has become continuous use. Nic tells David that he and Z. have been high since then on speedballs and methamphetamine; speedballs combine heroin and cocaine. He says he has taken a sleeping pill to come down, recognizes that he has made a mistake, and intends to stop. His admission is an attempt at honesty, but the immediate promise of control proves unreliable. The sequence makes the relapse more than a single lapse: the drug use continues across days, while Nic’s assurances that he can end it do not halt the deterioration.

The descent is quick and visible in ordinary parts of life. Nic shows up high at work and loses his job. His phone is disconnected because he has not paid the bill, and he cuts himself off from his real friends, including Randy, his best friend and sponsor. In a message, Nic says that he and Z. have sold their clothes to pay for food. David does not know how they have paid their rent or how they will manage the next month; he fears they may soon be homeless unless they find a benefactor or deal drugs. The loss of a job, a working phone, and basic financial security narrows the space in which anyone can reach or help him.

Oakland and the break-in

As Nic and Z. become harder to reach, their messages offer reassurance that does not withstand scrutiny. Nic uses Z.’s working phone to say they are safe, attending meetings, and that he is getting sober. He describes the relapse as a one-time, three-day mistake and claims he is fine, yet the longer he speaks, the more his voice sounds to David like that of someone still using. David warns him about the danger of missing meetings and trusting the reasoning of a brain under the influence, but he and the others who love Nic can see the crisis approaching without being able to stop it.

The next alarms come from Nic’s godfather and Vicki: Nic has called both of them asking for help in Oakland. To Vicki, he admits that he lied about being in Joshua Tree because he did not want her to worry that he was in Oakland. He says he is sober, but also says that he and Z. are in trouble and need plane tickets back to Los Angeles. His account is convoluted; its urgent point is that they are staying in the home of a crack addict who is out of his mind, and they need to get out.

The crisis sharpens on a warm November morning. While driving over Olema Hill to pick up Jasper from an overnight at the soccer field near the windmill in Golden Gate Park, David calls Z. She is breathless, frantic, angry, and worried. She says Nic dropped her at a market in Pacific Palisades at 5:45 a.m., took her car to Vicki’s home, and intended to break in and steal Vicki’s computer. He had promised to return within fifteen minutes. Four hours later he was still gone, and Z., assuming he had been arrested, had called the police; they had no record of him. Her sobbing question about what could have happened in the five blocks between the market and Vicki’s house gives the disappearance its terrible immediacy.

Vicki initially tells David there is no sign of Nic. Half an hour later, she calls back: Nic is in the garage. He has broken in and is piling items into shopping bags, but has become confused and locked himself inside. Panicked, crazed, and ranting, he is, as David clarifies, tweaking. Z. has also heard from Nic, who called from a telephone in the garage; she is packing his clothes and says they will be outside on the porch. After speaking with her husband, Vicki gives Nic a stark choice: the police will be called and he will be arrested, or he can return to rehabilitation. The relapse has turned into an immediate confrontation with consequences he can no longer evade.

From the hospital to a treatment decision

After an initial burst of bravado, Nic seems resigned and mystified by his failure to stay sober. He says he thought wanting sobriety would be enough, and that being in love could keep him sober; neither belief held. He says the experience frightens him and that he supposes this is what being an addict means. The recognition does not erase the relapse, but it marks a change in what he can acknowledge about it: love and intention alone have not protected him from using.

On Monday, Nic speaks with a counselor at Hazelden and tells David afterward that he is going to Oregon. David books a flight while knowing Nic may not show up. Nic then says he is packed and ready to go. Before he can travel, however, David arranges admission to a hospital and calls Z. with the change of plan. Rather than send Nic to the airport, he wants him somewhere safe. After midnight, Z. drops Nic at the hospital. Medication begins the detox process, and a nurse explains that he will sleep through much of the first few days. The alternative, cold turkey, can bring acute pain, depression, distress, and hopelessness severe enough to drive people back to drugs.

David checks regularly with the nurses. One says that, given the quantity and variety of drugs in Nic’s system, it is a miracle he made it to the hospital and that his body might not have survived another month. The assessment makes the episode’s stakes explicit: this is not only a relapse requiring a new plan, but a medical emergency from which Nic has arrived in time for care.

While Nic detoxes, Vicki and David search for the next program. They consult Dr. Rawson, Hazelden’s supervisor, the detoxing doctor, and other contacts, and make dozens of calls to admissions representatives. Some programs cost forty thousand dollars a month, while the experts say Nic will need many months of treatment; his parents cannot afford that rate. The advice is contradictory, and some programs seem aggressively commercial. One option sounds suitable and more affordable until they hear that it is a hard-core program where rule-breaking can be punished by cutting grass with scissors. Later, conference calls extend their search to programs in Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Massachusetts.

Santa Fe and departure

Vicki and David finally choose a program in Santa Fe, but the decision brings no certainty. Dr. Rawson describes the treatment landscape as a non-system of rumor, marketing, best guesses, and fiscal opportunism; after weighing the available information, Nic’s parents have made the best choice they can without knowing whether it is the right one. Nic calls to argue that he should remain in Los Angeles and, at most, enter outpatient treatment. David answers that a part of Nic knows he needs to go somewhere and stay until he has done the difficult work of understanding what is wrong and what he can do.

David explains the fear behind that insistence: Nic could black out, overdose, become psychotic, cause irrevocable damage, or die. Nic replies that he lives with that knowledge too. They weep together, though they are in separate places: Nic is in a hospital hallway, leaning against a wall, while David cries on the kitchen floor. Before hanging up, Nic says he cannot believe this is his life and agrees to do whatever it takes. The exchange does not promise that treatment will solve the problem; it records a moment when the danger is spoken aloud and Nic consents to the next step.

Early Tuesday, Vicki picks Nic up at the hospital in the valley and drives him directly to the airport. She persuades a security agent to let her through the checkpoint so she can escort him to the gate and onto the flight to New Mexico. From the lounge she tells David that Nic has boarded and the plane is backing away from the jetway. David imagines his son as frail, opaque, and ill, and speaks to him by phone before the plane leaves. The jet pulls away; David hangs up. The departure closes this immediate crisis with a concrete act of return to care, but not with a claim that recovery is complete.