Nic Sheff’s relapses

Nic Sheff’s relapses repeatedly overturn periods of apparent recovery, making recurrence—not a clean return to health—the governing pattern of his addiction. They bring him back to methamphetamine and heroin, into disappearance, job and relationship losses, and dangerous behavior; for his family, each crisis renews both the effort to help him and the recognition that they cannot choose recovery for him.

Repeated Disappearance and Crisis

In an earlier crisis, Jasper Sheff asks whether Nicky is all right, and David Sheff can only say that the family does not know and hopes he is. The ordeal lasts four days. The brief exchange makes a recurring feature of Nic’s relapses plain: his absence becomes an emergency for the people who love him, but they cannot tell where he is or whether he is safe.

In a later relapse, Vicki and David Sheff again search for news. Vicki contacts Z., who confirms that Nic called her from San Francisco and was high. When Nic eventually tells David what has happened, he admits that he has relapsed and is using meth and heroin. His mother has reported him missing to the Santa Monica police; Marin County sheriffs are patrolling the family home and the home of friends Nic broke into. David warns him that jail is where his actions are leading, but when Nic asks what he should do, David can offer only the familiar recovery steps: call his sponsor, Randy.

The need for immediate intervention returns with each crisis. After one episode in which Nic becomes unconscious, a person with him calls 911. The ambulance reaches his apartment, and his landlord contacts Vicki, whose name is on the lease. The doctor tells David that without the emergency response Nic would already be dead, although there is now a chance he will survive. David prepares to fly to New York; shortly afterward, the doctor reports that Nic should pull through and that his vital signs are returning to normal. The reprieve does not resolve the larger pattern: survival from an acute crisis is not the same as recovery from addiction.

Sobriety, Overconfidence, and Return to Use

After eighteen months sober, Nic is astonished by his relapse and ashamed of it. He identifies overconfidence as part of the danger: he had begun to believe that his life was manageable and that he could handle things without the humility recovery required. He says he is attending two meetings a day and must start the steps again. Randy helps him find a new job, and the two resume working the twelve steps together. They also ride their bicycles for long distances before or after work. These changes give David grounds for hope, but not certainty; he keeps asking himself whether this time is different and measures progress day by day.

Later, Nic again describes a relapse after a stretch approaching two years. Three days before he calls, he and Z. are at a party where she uses cocaine and asks him to join her. He does. Nic says he will not let her go out alone. The account places his return to use alongside renewed involvement with Z., who had broken his heart before the previous relapse; he has moved out of his apartment and into hers. The circumstances are specific, but the narrative does not reduce the relapse to a single cause. It also recalls that researchers said a user’s brain could take two years to recover fully, a milestone Nic has never reached since his addiction began.

The Speed and Cost of Deterioration

At first, Nic’s life appears to offer reasons to expect stability. He has a girlfriend, a job he enjoys, coworkers he considers friends, a book deal, and the possibility of work as an assistant editor at a magazine. His movie reviews have led to interviews and a review for Wired magazine, and he has a close circle of friends. David stresses that these circumstances do not prevent the relapse or explain it away. The descent is quick: Nic appears high at work and loses his job; his phone is disconnected when he fails to pay the bill; he withdraws from his friends and, most painfully, from Randy, his best friend and sponsor. In one message, Nic says that he and his girlfriend have sold their clothes to pay for food. David does not know how they will pay the next month’s rent and fears that homelessness may follow.

The crisis eventually reaches Vicki’s home. Nic breaks in, fills shopping bags with things he is trying to steal, becomes confused, and locks himself inside the garage. He is panicked, ranting, and out of his mind on meth; David identifies the state as tweaking. Z. has heard from Nic and says his clothes will be left on the porch. After consulting her husband, Vicki gives Nic a choice: the police will be called and he will be arrested, or he can return to rehabilitation. For David, the scene is the expected danger finally arriving—the dam breaking after he had known since the relapse that something like this might happen.

Family Strain and the Meaning of Recurrence

Nic’s repeated returns to drugs expose the limits of David’s attempts to protect him. David describes living with the contradiction that an addicted person may not be responsible for the condition itself yet remains the person responsible for acting on it. He knows he must draw boundaries about what he will accept and do, while also allowing that those boundaries may need to change. When Nic is in hospital, David finds that his love has become more compassionate, not less, but compassion cannot provide a cure or guarantee safety.

David’s own brain hemorrhage sharpens this understanding. In the neuro intensive-care unit at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, he cannot remember his name or the year. The medical crisis does not erase his worry about Nic, even when he cannot remember Nic’s phone number. Later, David recalls that he once wished he could have Nic removed from his mind to escape the anguish. He no longer wants that erasure: he accepts the worry as bound up with the love he feels for his son. At the same time, the experience helps him recognize that Nic, Jasper, and Daisy would survive his death and that he cannot save his children, however much he can love, guide, and help them.

The relapse that follows Nic’s extended sobriety defeats the wish for a finished family story. David had wanted Nic’s letter to Jasper to serve as a neat, happy ending and to mark a life after addiction. Instead, he emphasizes that addiction is not curable: it may go into remission and can be managed through sustained work, but it remains a lifelong disease. Nic’s returns to use are therefore not merely setbacks on the way to a guaranteed recovery. Their recurrence changes the shape of the family’s expectations, forcing hope to coexist with uncertainty and making each period of apparent stability provisional.