Non-Fiction Memoirs in the Neuroscience Classroom: A Window into the Minds of Those Affected by Addiction

When I first developed an Addiction course for the Honors College at UMass-Boston in 2006, it focused exclusively on the acute and long-term effects of psychoactive substances on the brain. However, I soon realized that a strictly biological perspective failed to capture how this complex disorder affected the whole person. Students had no insight into addicts' thoughts, feelings, behaviors or how their addiction affected others. To remedy this, students read two non-fiction memoirs: Tweak (Nic Sheff, young adult addict) and Beautiful Boy (David Sheff, Nic's father) along with learning underlying neurobiology and pharmacology. Reading memoirs students saw firsthand the impact of addiction on individuals. Inspired by the diary structure of Tweak, one assignment asked students to collect data about themselves in order to determine their daily patterns/rituals and to contemplate the impact of removing these activities - like the addict after rehabilitation. Other assignments asked students to do close reading by selecting passages from Tweak and explaining how they related to different facets of addiction (biological, environmental, effect on individual), and to perform a comparative analysis between Beautiful Boy and Tweak to find points of intersection and divergence. Most recently, students used the text of Tweak to create interactive performances for a visiting high school class. Memoirs provided students with detailed, honest accounts of lives affected by addiction. The assignments and class discussions facilitated students understanding of the impact of addiction on individuals and their families, which was a powerful adjunct to learning about its underlying neurobiology and pharmacology.