Deirdre, Carrick, Duncan and I spoke at the Carolinas Conference on Addiction & Recovery last night for nearly two hours. I think it went well. No one fell asleep. Duncan, in particular, had some good lines that broke the audience up. He left out a couple of cusswords, but I think he'll figure out how to work them into his next speech.

The theme of the four-day event is "Addiction: A Family Disease." I started with a general background on how and why we got involved with "Saving Carrick" and an exhortation for others to use the media to spread the message that drug use has negative consequences (as opposed to most portrayals), and that recovery happens.

Carrick is clearly the best among us at speaking off the cuff. She said she had prepared notes, but I didn't see her refer to them. She handled her theme of "recovery comes in many ways" with passion and humor.

Duncan, who I said had at various times played the "mascot," "lost child" and "hero" roles, coined new sociological jargon to describe how he often felt when everything swirled around Carrick's addition. He called himself "the ghost child." He concluded with an analogy to the addiction of one member of the family being a break in a linked chain.

Deirdre was eloquent on the the need for advocacy. She also talked about Faces and Voices of Recovery and Madison East, and closed by touching on one of her most urgent topics, Timothy's Law.

I wrapped it all up with a short rant on how we treat symptoms rather than root problems in this country (Got a headache? Take a pill. Wrinkles? Botox. Low-level druggie? Prison). Then we took some questions.

Our only regret was that we could not stay for the entire conference. (Well, excepting Duncan.) We could have learned a lot, not only from the presenters, but also from our audience of treatment providers. Carrick talked about returning next year to help Jim Van Hecke, the dynamic organizer of the conference and former administrator of Pavillon International, which takes a holistic approach to recovery, with logistics.

I hope that some of the participants at the conference will check out Elephant on Main and contribute to the discussions. We've had some providers weigh in from time to time, but it would be good to get some steady participation and get the Discussions moving again.

In fact, the coast from the airing of "Saving Carrick" has just about played out. It's time to think about what content will attract some new eyes and rejuvenate those of us who have been on the site a while. I have been lax in posting more of Our Story. But I think I'll continue to put that on the back burner in order to build up the interactive elements. I'll throw out some ideas in a couple of days and see if there's any reaction.