Dateline NBC
In July, 2005, NBC's Dateline aired an hour-long special report titled Saving Carrick. More precisely, Dateline documented the impact Carrick's addiction had on my family from the summer of 2003 through the autumn of 2004. During this period, we threw Carrick out of the house after she walked out of yet another rehab. She served time on Riker's Island and started speedballing. Wracked by this combination of heroin and cocaine and realizing that she could not return home as an active addict, she finally hit bottom in January 2004. She and Pete detoxed at Coney Island Hospital, then entered a methadone program at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
In April 2004, our family reconciled. Carrick, who turned 21 on August 4, took twelve college credits last year to obtain her high school diploma and will matriculate full time in the fall of 2005. She has talked to Dateline's audience about her addiction in a way that could profoundly change many people's lives. Deirdre, meanwhile, has graduated from a substance abuse certificate program at the top of her class. She worked as a drug counselor at a program for women in the Bronx that was shut down for lack of funds, and is now the intake coordinator for Madison East, a new program at Mount Sinai.
I've suspended my fear that Carrick will unknowingly inject rat poison into her veins. I fret now when she rides the subway late at night, as fathers normally do. I still worry that the hepatitis C that she contracted while she was on the street will corrode her liver. I also fear that all the good things that are happening right now could slip away as easily as Carrick does in my nightmare. But her death is no longer something my conscious mind compulsively discusses with itself. Now, I find myself celebrating Carrick's rebirth in little moments like hearing a glass shatter in the next room and knowing her fumble fingers were responsible.
The Elephant on Main Street is the back story of the struggle for recovery and reconciliation that Dateline's cameras report within the context of our family's — and our neighbors'— quest for escape, sociability and meaning through drugs that alter our consciousness. In particular, I write about the three-year period between the time that Carrick first tried heroin and ran away from home to a day when I simultaneously smell pot in her room and read a stunning essay she has written about the first time she shot up. I also deal candidly with Deirdre's and my past use of drugs and alcohol - indeed, we were high on booze, pot and cocaine the night Carrick was conceived - and to genetic, cultural and social factors that were part of the mix of all of our addictions. Vignettes of other addicts, survivors and unsung heroes in our small village provide context to a story that is as universal as it is personal.