PAIN AND SECRECY OF ADDICTION SHAPES 'WOUNDED HEALERS'

Our family's private battle with addiction became very public when
"Saving Carrick," a "Dateline NBC" documentary about our daughter's
recovery from heroin dependency, first aired in July 2005.

We participated in that story, even filming embarrassing scenes of
confrontation and dysfunction ourselves, because my wife Deirdre and
I wanted to help to break the hush-hush silence that surrounds this disease.

Indeed, addiction to alcohol and other drugs is the "Elephant on Main
Street" - the name of the Web site and blog we've set up
(http://elephantonmain.com) to discuss a growing problem in our
communities that many people pretend they don't see.

Deirdre and I have both been sober since the mid-1980s. In 2002, we
started talking openly about our own struggle with alcoholism and
drugs when we were young adults because we felt that some members of
our community were dismissing their children's experimentation with
mind-altering substances as a "rite of passage" to be treated with a
wink - or even a nod.

We are by no means alone in turning our experience into advocacy.
There is a long history in the recovery movement of what William L.
White, author of "Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction
Treatment and Recovery in America," calls "wounded healers" - men and
women who overcome their afflictions and then feel compelled to help others.

Many of today's prominent support groups, treatment facilities and
philanthropies have been born from the experience of recovery
alcoholics and addicts or those affected by them, including
Alcoholics Anonymous, the National Council of Alcohol and Drug
Dependence, the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation, the Lowe Family
Foundation, and the Betty Ford Center.

Within days of the death of his 25-year-old son from a fatal dose of
alcohol and Ecstasy last year, prominent attorney Robert Shapiro
launched the Brent Shapiro Foundation for Drug Awareness
(www.foundationfordrugawareness.com) to raise awareness, support
research and engender discussion about chemical dependency.

On a grassroots level, thousands of ad hoc groups around the country
- - many of them also formed after personal heartbreak - are addressing
the needs not only of addicts, but also of family members, including
the siblings who often are innocent victims of the disease.

"A vanguard of recovering people and their families are standing
together to offer themselves as living proof of the existence and
transformative power of successful long-term recovery," White says.
"They are educating local communities, reaching out to those still
suffering, organizing new recovery support services and advocating
pro-recovery social policies."

Libba Phillips started Outpost for Hope (outpostforhope.org) when her
younger sister, who suffers from mental illness and crack cocaine and
alcohol addictions, disappeared in 1999 and her family discovered
that law enforcement and social services organizations were unwilling
or unable to help. Based in Citrus Heights, Calif., the group helps
other families looking for missing loved ones, many of whom, with
co-occurring addiction and mental disorders, navigate what Philips
calls "the lost highway."

"It has given me a purpose," she says. "There's a real power in
numbers, to know that you're not the only person who's going through this."

The Peers Influence Peers Partnership (peerspartnership.org), which
carries a prevention and recovery message to young adults across the
country, was founded in 1993 after the cousin of a student in Frank
Reale's video production club in the Putnam Valley, N.Y., school
system died in a drunk driving accident. Since then, more than 250
high school and college students have created and produced a dozen
hourlong videos and public service announcements broadcast via
satellite each year to a thousand locations across the country.

"Having it come from kids rather than adults, it's less of a lecture
and more trying to really help someone," says Peter Ries, 16, a
junior at Putnam Valley High School.

Pat Nichols, a travel agent in Edmond, Okla., formed Parents Helping
Parents (www.parentshelpingparents.info) in 2000 to help other
families avoid the pain he was experiencing watching his son deal
with addictions to both alcohol and drugs. He has counseled more than
1,200 families since then, providing "emergency triage" in the form
of referrals and coaching. He's set up a Web site listing local
resources, and established two additional chapters in Norman and
Stillwater, Okla. - and, as of this writing, his son had just
celebrated 90 days of sobriety.

Two years ago, after Joanne Peterson discovered that her 19-year-old
son was a heroin addict, she "went through grief, shock and horror
before realizing that I was isolating myself." Following a panel
discussion about the opiate epidemic sweeping the area where she
lives south of Boston - 29 young people died from overdoses in
Bristol and Plymouth counties alone in 2005 - Peterson told a
newspaper reporter that she'd like to start a parents group. She
received nearly 100 e-mails after the story appeared in the Patriot
Ledger newspaper, in Quincy, Mass. Learn To Cope (www.learn2cope.org)
now conducts weekly meetings for 280 members, and maintains an active
Web site and online discussion group. Peterson's son just celebrated
a year of recovery.

Collectively, these mutual aid groups transcend the comfort and
support they offer their participants, according to historian White.

"The future of addiction treatment and recovery in America," he says,
"hinges on the success or failure of this new recovery advocacy movement."