Here is his brilliant piece, Me and My Girls
(excerpt below)
Me and My Girls
By DAVID CARR
Published: July 20, 2008
Where does a junkie’s time go? Mostly in 15-minute increments,
like a bug-eyed Tarzan, swinging from hit to hit. For months on end in
1988, I sat inside a house in north Minneapolis, doing coke and
listening to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and finding my own pathetic
resonance in the lyrics. “Any place is better,” she sang. “Starting from
zero, got nothing to lose.”
The Redeemers Meagan and Erin, David Carr’s twins,
born prematurely in the midst of a crack binge. For them, he turned his
life around. “If that all sounds like some after-school special," he
writes, "with the fat ex-junkie dad singing to his misbegotten
daughters, well, it is what it is."
THE ADDICT’S FAMILY:
From top: The author's welfare card, issued when he entered treatment
The author at Eden House, a Minneapolis drug treatment center, 1989;
Meagan and Erin, the author’s twins, at 6 months; Anna, the author’s
ex-girlfriend and the girls’ mother.
After shooting or smoking a large dose, there would be the tweaking and a
vigil at the front window, pulling up the corner of the blinds to look
for the squads I was always convinced were on their way. All day. All
night. A frantic kind of boring. End-stage addiction is mostly about
waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.(link above for full article