Sheff, a journalist, has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Playboy, Wired, Fortune, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His interview subjects have included John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Steve Jobs, Ai Weiwei, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Jack Nicholson, Ted Taylor, Carl Sagan, Betty Friedan, Barney Frank, and Fareed Zakaria, among others. In addition to Beautiful Boy, Sheff wrote the books Game Over, China Dawn, and All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He has also been an editor of New West, California, and other magazines. Beautiful Boy was based on Sheff's article, "My Addicted Son," that first appeared in the New York Times Magazine. The article won an award for "Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addictions" from the American Psychological Association. In January 2019, HIGH: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction, was published. A resource for middle-school readers offering clear, direct information about the realities of drugs and alcohol, it is Sheff and his son Nic's first collaborative project. In 2019, Sheff founded , a charity devoted to making quality, evidence-based treatment for substance-use disorder accessible to those in need of treatment, and identifying and supporting research to further the field of addiction medicine.
Views on addiction
Sheff educates about addiction as a brain disease and is an advocate for putting addicts into therapy programs early. He believes life stresses and traumas are risk factors, and that therapy for these can help addiction prevention. He is an advocate of life skills training to aid addiction prevention.
Personal life
Sheff is on the advisory boards of the Jed and Clinton Health Matters Campus Program "designed to help colleges and universities promote emotional well-being and mental health programming, reduce substance abuse and prevent suicide" among their students. He is also an honorary board member with the International Bipolar Foundation. Sheff lives in Northern California with his wife, Karen Barbour, an artist, illustrator, and author of children's books. He has three children: Nic, Jasper, and Daisy Sheff. Nic Sheff has also written a memoir recounting his years of addiction in the book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.
In popular culture
In 2018, Felix van Groeningen adapted Sheff's book Beautiful Boy into a feature film of the same name. In the film, Sheff is portrayed by Steve Carell, with Timothée Chalamet as his son, Nic. Actress Maura Tierney portrays David's wife, artist Karen Barbour, and Amy Ryan plays Nic's mother, Vicki. This is what viewers called Steve Carell and Amy Ryan's first time acting together since their romantic duo as Michael Scott and Holly Flax on The Office U.S.
