Author’s Biography

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. His latest book is Yoko, the definitive biography of Yoko Ono, to be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2025. The book will show Ono’s place in history and her profound influence on art, music, feminism and activism.

Beautiful Boy was a number-one New York Times bestseller and the best nonfiction book of the year, according to Entertainment Weekly. 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, American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and 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, and 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.

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.

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About David Sheff

“David Sheff knows addiction as no parent would ever want. Through it all, he’s tapped into a unique ability to convey the pain, wisdom and love that he’s experienced through many turbulent years with his son Nic. As a journalist, father and clear-eyed chronicler of addiction, David is without peer.” 

– Sanjay Gupta, MD
Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN

“David Sheff wrote a book in 2008 that became a kind of landmark. Beautiful Boy, a painful, personal story of the battle he tried to fight with and alongside his son, Nic, who was addicted to methamphetamines. The book became an international best-seller and made David Sheff one of the country’s most prominent voices on addiction — not as a doctor, an addict or an academic expert, but as a father. Sheff has continued to try to figure out a road that can lead out of addiction, and he presents that route in his new book, Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy.”

– Scott Simon, Weekend Edition
National Public Radio

“David Sheff is a skilled journalist on an urgent mission. He prevailed over the anger and hopelessness he felt at his son’s affliction by calling upon great reserves of love and discipline to investigate what might help — first as a father and then, in this book, as a reporter and an advocate. His forbearance and clearheadedness could serve as an example for America as it confronts its drug problem. He has performed a vital service by compiling sensible advice on a subject for which sensible advice is in short supply.”

– New York Times Book Review

About some of David’s other books:

His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote that The Buddhist on Death Row “shows vividly how, even in the face of the greatest adversity, compassion and a warm-hearted concern for others bring peace and inner strength." Annie Lamott called it “a beautiful, profoundly spiritual book,” and said, “Reading it changed me, threw the lights on, opened and gentled my heart.” David’s Game Over was called “the bible of the video-game industry” by The Wall Street Journal and “beguiling” and  “irresistible. . . almost as hypnotic as a successful video game” by The New York Times. Author Gore Vidal wrote that China Dawn, David’s book about the Internet revolution in China, is a “fascinating…study of go–getting businessmen in a revived China bound to shape our future.” All We Are Saying, based on David’s interviews with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1980, was a Literary Guild Selection book.