David Sheff is a journalist and author of Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy, the follow-up to his New York Times best seller, Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction. Beautiful Boy, published in 2008, was based on his article, “My Addicted Son,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine and won an award from the American Psychological Association for “outstanding contribution to the understanding of addiction.” Clean is the result of the years Sheff spent investigating the disease of substance use disorder and America’s drug problem, which he sees as the greatest public health challenge of our time.
In 2009, Sheff was named to the TIME 100, Time Magazine’s list of Most Influential People and 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.” He also was awarded the 2013 College of Problems on Drug Dependence (CPDD) Media Award and 2017 American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) Media Award “to recognize his compelling portrayal of addiction and its personal effects on families and society as a whole.” Sheff has also written for The New York Times, Wired, Rolling Stone, Outside, and Esquire among other publications, and has published several other books, including one based on interviews with John Lennon, and an award-winning documentary about John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. He serves on the advisory boards of The Jed and Clinton Health Matters Campus Program and the International Bipolar Foundation. A graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, Sheff lives with his family in Northern California.