Deirdre, Carrick and I are going to be guests on Donny Deutsch's "The Big Idea" on Monday, Oct. 24 on CNBC. The show airs at 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. (Tuesday morning) ET. I've seen a few shows and the format is a relaxed Q&A. Deutsch seems well prepped, and leaves plenty of space for answers, so we're hopeful that it will be a meaningful interview. He did a program on meth last week, and his producer tells us that they want to do a lot more about substance abuse and addiction. Unfortunately, Duncan has a soccer game so it doesn't look like he'll be able to join us for the taping, which begins at 7 p.m.

Just as I wrote that the coast we got from the July air date had ebbed, things are picking up again. MSNBC played "Saving Carrick" several times over the past two weekends. (Unfortunately, there seems to be no way that we can get advance notice so we can alert people we know who haven't seen it yet.) We've also been reading heart-wrenching stories, mostly in emails, although about fifty new members have registered in the Discussion area and a few have posted.

We are making alliances with a wide range of people that will, we hope, will continue to develop. I went to a lecture last night by a guy who quit his job as a high school guidance counselor to get the message out that the college admissions doesn't have to be the nerve-wracking process it has become. He said that he saw himself as a carpenter building a stage to which he hoped to bring a wide range of people, from college presidents to frazzled students. That's what we hope to accomplish, too. This last week has driven home how many people this disease touches, from CEOs to movie stars to students to homeless individuals from the boonies to suburbia to the inner city. Situations vary. Philosophies differ. The trick will be to get people united behind a common goal of tearing down barriers to treatment and eliminating stigma.

My friend Sue emailed me the the other day that her daughter Meri, a sophomore at Skidmore, was sitting with some friends at lunch. One of them said something like, “Wow, we just saw this intense film during class. Saving Cara. Or maybe Carey. Whatever, but it’s about this Westchester family and …. Christ, half the girls in the class were crying but it really gives hope." Meri mentioned that she knew us, and someone said, "Maybe Prof. So-and-So can get them up here." Schedules permitting, we'd be happy to go. We have a friend whose child fell into the drug scene at Skidmore and had to leave, but it could have happened at any college in America. Schedules permitting, in fact, we'd go anywhere.

On Sunday morning, I got a call from a woman who lost a sister to liver disease two years ago at age 42, and whose father died of alcoholism at 39. She wants to show "Saving Carrick" to her group, Wounded Healers, which meets at St. Paul's Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn. St. Paul's has 7,000 members and was the subject of Upon This Rock: The Miracle of Black Churches. She wants to change laws, advocate for recovery, and stay in touch, and I hope we do.

Carrick's counselor from the Chamberlain School also called last week, and through a friend of hers we learned about the Learn To Cope online support group for parents and family of opiate addicts. It's based in southern Massachusetts, where OxyContin has become a major problem. I exchanged emails with founder Joanne Peterson, who told me that a 26-year-old who had just come home from a three-week rehab had ODed and died. "He is the 23rd death since January," she said. That's a shocking number. OxyContin is a highly regulated drug. As much as I don't believe that addicted individuals should be in jail, it makes me wonder what would happen if illicit drugs were legalized.

I also received an email recently from a mother who had difficulty getting a book about her daughter's struggle with anorexia published, just as I did with Elephant on Main Street. She helpfully suggested Hazelden to me. I'm now convinced that Elephant should be online rather than in print, but we are working with Hazelden to add some book excerpts and author's interviews to the site. (All authors belong online!). I also hope that this mom will join the Discussion and offer some insights to the thread on anorexia/bulemia that never got off the ground. Carrick went through a short anorexic phase before she started using drugs, and was just pounds away from being hospitalized. I'm sure this is not an isolated case. In fact, I just read a harrowing story on the Learn to Cope board about an ex-cop who lost one daughter to anorexia and the other to drugs.

I've also resumed contact with Libba Philips, the founder of Outpost for Hope, which attempts to bridge the gap between missing people and their loved ones. Libba contacted us when "Saving Carrick" first ran. We'd like to promote awareness for her Letters Out Loud project with such organizations as the Midnight Run, a consortium of 150 groups that feed the homeless in New York City.

Finally, Dr. Harris Stratyner and I are on the last lap of a book proposal for Conversations with Dizzy about Living, Loving and Becoming a Mensch. Harris is Deirdre's boss at Madison East, a new short-term treatment program at Mount Sinai Medical Center that was designed for accomplished individuals such as CEOs, entertainers and athletes. Harris' dad was jazz great Dizzy Gillespie's accountant and confidant; Dizzy called Harris his "godson." A lot of Harris' treatment philosophy of "carefrontation" can be traced back to the lessons he learned from Dizzy, from sitting on his knee right up to his dying days.

So, it's busy around here, with a lot of promising alliances in the air, but what really keeps up going are the posts, emails and phone calls we receive from people who are going through similar difficulties. And even more gratifying is to see people making connections among themselves on the Discussions boards. I wasn't quite sure what I meant by "an interactive memoir of addictions and recoveries" when that subtitle occurred to me, but this is definitely it. Now all I need to do is find the time to resume writing the part of Elephant that's not interactive. There's one good thing about a publishing contract besides the advance. The deadline.