I saw a gleam on Carrick's face about an hour ago that I haven't seen since she was a little girl. It was pure joy, as if she were at one with the world, both within and without.

We were standing outside a doctor's office on 75th St. in Manhattan. Carrick had ingested two milligrams of suboxone (buprenorphine and naloxone) 45 minutes earlier. After withdrawing from methadone for the last day or so, she was feeling normal again. The days of trudging to the clinic three times a week, empty bottle in hand, are over. She was talking a mile a minute on the car ride back home about her plans for her last two years of college, people she's met on her journey, and ideas (she has a great book or documentary idea that I'd steal if I weren't her father ).

Two milligrams of suboxone is a low dose for someone just coming off methadone. The doctor had written out a prescription for four mgs. She told Carrick to take more if she felt sick later, and she will. But Carrick is tired of being dependent on anything, and wants to get off bupe as soon as possible. "Three months," she told the doctor. "But I'm not going to be stupid about it," she assured me. "If I still need to take some in three months, I will."

I haven't written much about Carrick lately. She has been telling her own story much better than I could at the Silent Treatment website, and our part of the story has gotten pretty "normal" as Carrick has gotten well. But I do feel compelled to post something about how proud of Carrick and grateful to the cosmos I feel today. I literally saw chains lifted from her spirit this afternoon, and I felt as fortunate to be there as I felt despair when I found her sleeping in an abandoned band shell on the lower east side five years ago next month. It only seems like a lifetime ago because it was.

Subscribe to the Elephant on Main weblog

Visit the Elephant on Main Street website