David Sheff

David Sheff is the author of Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, Clean, All We Are Saying, The Buddhist on Death Row, Game Over, and other books. David is the founder of the Beautiful Boy Fund, devoted to supporting quality, evidence-based treatment for substance use disorders and research to further the field of addiction medicine.

According to Entertainment Weekly, beautiful Boy was the number-one New York Times bestseller and the best nonfiction book of the year. It was based on his article, “My Addicted Son,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine and won a special award from the American Psychological Association for “outstanding contribution to the understanding of addiction.” 

In 2009, David was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine’s list of the World’s Most Influential People. A feature film adaptation of “Beautiful Boy” was produced by Amazon Studios and Plan B Entertainment and starred Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet.

David followed Beautiful Boy with Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy, also a New York Times bestseller. The book was the result of the years David spent investigating the disease of addiction and America’s drug problem, which he sees as the greatest public health challenge of our time. The Partnership for Drug-free Kids honored him with a Special Tribute Award “in recognition of his voice and leadership for families who are struggling with addiction.” 

For his work educating about substance-use disorders and advocating for sufferers of addiction, David received awards from the College of Problems on Drug Dependence, the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and the American Society of Addiction Medicine. He was the first recipient of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry Arts and Literature Award.  

David also contributed to HBO’s Addiction: Why Can’t They Just Stop. Along with The New York Times Magazine, he has written for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, and other publications. He has conducted seminal interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Ai Weiwei, Steve Jobs, Ansel Adams, Betty Friedan, Keith Haring, Jack Nicholson, and many others. He’s currently writing what will be the definitive biography of Yoko Ono. The book will show Ono’s place in history and her profound influence on art, music, feminism, and activism. 

David graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives with his family in Northern California. Along with working as a writer, David has been a featured speaker about substance-use disorders and mental illness at the United Nations and high schools and colleges, addiction and mental health conferences, and community events throughout the United States and Canada.