Reading List

Authors Like David Sheff

On 6 February 2005 The New York Times Magazine published ‘My Addicted Son’, David Sheff's account of watching his eldest son, Nic, become addicted to methamphetamine. He expanded it into Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction (2008), which came out the same year as Nic's own memoir, Tweak; the two books became the 2018 film Beautiful Boy, with Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. Sheff, born in Boston in 1955, began as a magazine interviewer: his long conversation with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, recorded in 1980, appeared in Playboy in January 1981. After Beautiful Boy he wrote Clean (2013), a reported book on prevention and treatment, The Buddhist on Death Row (2020) and Yoko (2025), a biography of Ono. The ten writers below share his questions: what addiction does to a family, and what actually helps.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Addiction memoir · Family and recovery · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you like David Sheff, start with Nic Sheff, whose Tweak (2008) tells the same years from the son's side. For how America's drug crisis was made, read Sam Quinones's Dreamland; for recovery seen from the inside, read Leslie Jamison's The Recovering. Further down are a physician and a neuroscientist who, in different ways, challenge the idea of addiction as a brain disease.

10 authors like David Sheff

01
Before Sheff: the first confession

Thomas De Quincey

British · Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)

De Quincey was born in Manchester in 1785. He began taking laudanum, opium dissolved in alcohol, as a student, and his Confessions, first published anonymously in the London Magazine in 1821, describe both its pleasures and the nightmares that followed. He remained dependent on opium for most of his life and died in Edinburgh in 1859.

De Quincey wrote the first famous addiction memoir in English, almost two centuries before Tweak. His is the user's account rather than the family's, and suits readers curious about how long this story has been told.

— Lisanne
02
The son's side of the story

Nic Sheff

American · Tweak (2008), We All Fall Down (2011)

Nic Sheff was born in 1982 and is David Sheff's eldest son. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines covers his addiction and relapses in his own words, and We All Fall Down continues the story through rehab. He later worked as a writer on the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why.

The other half of Beautiful Boy: the same years and the same relapses, told by the son. Reading the two books together shows how differently a parent and a child remember the same events.

— Lisanne
03
Child of drinkers, drinking parent

Mary Karr

American · The Liars' Club (1995), Lit (2009)

Karr was born in Groves, Texas, in 1955. The Liars' Club, about her childhood in an east Texas oil town with a hard-drinking family, is often credited with starting the 1990s memoir boom. Lit covers her own alcoholism, her recovery and her conversion to Catholicism while raising her young son.

Karr writes about addiction as both a child of drinkers and a drinking parent, the two sides that Sheff and his son wrote about separately. Lit suits readers who want recovery told with humour and without a neat ending.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mary Karr →

04
Recovery, and its literature

Leslie Jamison

American · The Empathy Exams (2014), The Recovering (2018), Splinters (2024)

Jamison was born in Washington, D.C., in 1983 and teaches at Columbia University. The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath combines the story of her own drinking and sobriety with the lives of writers who drank, among them Raymond Carver and John Berryman, and a history of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jamison asks Sheff's question, what helps, from inside recovery, and adds the literary history behind it. She suits readers who want memoir and reporting in one book.

— Lisanne

Every book by Leslie Jamison →

05
Addiction as a wound

Gabor Maté

Hungarian-Canadian · In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (2008), The Myth of Normal (2022)

Maté was born in Budapest in 1944 to a Jewish family and emigrated to Canada in 1956. For twelve years he was a doctor in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, treating patients with severe addictions, and he supported harm reduction, including supervised injection. His argument that addiction is rooted in childhood trauma is widely read and is disputed by some researchers as too sweeping.

Maté complicates the view in Clean of addiction as a disease of the brain: for him it is a response to pain. Read him to test Sheff's conclusions, and read his critics too.

— Lisanne

Every book by Gabor Maté →

06
The case against the panic

Carl Hart

American · High Price (2013), Drug Use for Grown-Ups (2021)

Hart was born in Miami in 1966 and is a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at Columbia University. High Price mixes a memoir of his Miami childhood with research arguing that most people who use drugs do not become addicted. In Drug Use for Grown-Ups he writes about his own heroin use and argues for legalising drugs.

Hart argues with the fear at the centre of Beautiful Boy: he sees drug policy, more than drugs, as the bigger harm. He suits readers who want the strongest case against the way Americans usually talk about addiction.

— Lisanne
07
Where the drugs come from

Sam Quinones

American · Dreamland (2015), The Least of Us (2021)

Quinones reported from Mexico for ten years and then for the Los Angeles Times. Dreamland traces how OxyContin prescriptions and black-tar heroin from one Mexican town, Xalisco, spread through small-town America at the same time, and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Least of Us follows fentanyl and a new, more potent methamphetamine.

Quinones supplies the big picture behind one family's story: where the drugs come from and why they spread. The Least of Us, on modern methamphetamine, is the book closest to the drug in Beautiful Boy.

— Lisanne

Every book by Sam Quinones →

08
Parents, reporters and treatment

Beth Macy

American · Dopesick (2018), Raising Lazarus (2022)

Macy reported for The Roanoke Times in Virginia for decades. Dopesick follows the opioid epidemic from Purdue Pharma's marketing of OxyContin to the families of Appalachia; Raising Lazarus follows the people trying to help, from harm-reduction workers to doctors.

Macy writes about the parents of addicted children much as Sheff does, but as a reporter going door to door. Raising Lazarus asks the question at the end of Clean: what treatment works, and why so few people get it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Beth Macy →

09
Loving the child you have

Andrew Solomon

American · The Noonday Demon (2001), Far from the Tree (2012)

Solomon was born in New York in 1963. The Noonday Demon, which mixes his own depression with research, won the National Book Award in 2001. Far from the Tree draws on interviews with hundreds of families whose children are very different from their parents, including children who are deaf, autistic, or who have committed crimes.

Solomon writes about the love Sheff writes about: parents learning to accept a child they cannot change. He suits readers who want the question of Beautiful Boy asked across many families.

— Lisanne

Every book by Andrew Solomon →

10
The teacher in his prison book

Pema Chödrön

American · When Things Fall Apart (1996), The Places That Scare You (2001)

Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in New York in 1936 and became a Tibetan Buddhist nun and the first director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. In Sheff's The Buddhist on Death Row she is a frequent visitor to Jarvis Jay Masters at San Quentin. In 2020 she resigned as a senior teacher of Shambhala International, partly over its handling of sexual misconduct allegations against its leadership.

Chödrön is a central figure in Sheff's later book, and her writing explains the practice that changed Masters's life in prison. She suits readers who came to Sheff for the question of how people live with suffering.

— Lisanne

Every book by Pema Chödrön →

Where to start if you loved David Sheff

If you want the son's side, read Nic Sheff.

Tweak: the years of Beautiful Boy, told by the boy.

If you want the big picture, read Sam Quinones.

Dreamland: how pills and heroin reached small-town America.

If you want recovery from the inside, read Leslie Jamison.

The Recovering: one woman's sobriety and the writers who drank before her.

If you want the argument against the disease model, read Carl Hart.

High Price: a neuroscientist's memoir and his case on drug policy.

If you have only read Beautiful Boy, try Clean (2013).

Sheff's reported follow-up on how addiction can be prevented and treated.

Frequently asked questions about authors like David Sheff

Who writes like David Sheff?

Nic Sheff, Mary Karr and Leslie Jamison write about addiction from inside a family or a recovery. Sam Quinones and Beth Macy report on the wider drug crisis, and Gabor Maté and Carl Hart question how addiction is usually explained.

What should I read after Beautiful Boy?

Nic Sheff's Tweak (2008) tells the same story from the son's side. David Sheff's own Clean (2013) follows it with reporting on prevention and treatment.

Is Beautiful Boy a true story?

Yes. It grew out of Sheff's 2005 New York Times Magazine article ‘My Addicted Son’, about his son Nic's methamphetamine addiction. The 2018 film is based on both his book and Nic's Tweak.

Does David Sheff have a new book?

His most recent book is Yoko (2025), a biography of Yoko Ono, whom he first interviewed with John Lennon for Playboy in 1980. Before that came The Buddhist on Death Row (2020).

Which David Sheff book should I read first?

Beautiful Boy (2008) is the usual start. Read Clean (2013) next for the research, or The Buddhist on Death Row (2020) for a different story of change behind bars.

What is The Buddhist on Death Row about?

It follows Jarvis Jay Masters, sentenced to death in 1990 for his alleged role in the killing of a guard at San Quentin, and his practice of Buddhism in prison, with Pema Chödrön among his visitors.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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