A family's struggle against addiction

Two months after "Dateline" began following the Forbes’ story, the Hastings high school had a homecoming. Any homecoming is a cause for celebration, but any event where kids can find alcohol gives the Forbes cause for concern. Thom takes every opportunity to warn Duncan about risky behavior.

"If there is no parent at this party, there’s going to be beer at least," Thom tells Duncan.

Because of the choices Carrick made, Duncan doesn’t have as many. At the risk of seeming over-protective, Thom called other parents to tip them off about the possibility of under-age drinking that night.

The Forbes still worry even though there is a major difference between the two children. Duncan is adopted. He didn’t inherit his parent’s addictive tendencies. He’s a good student, a natural athlete, and he’s not a social outsider like his sister. Duncan is involved in school activities.

It hurt Duncan that his sister missed his achievements — like his role in the school play, Romeo and Juliet. "If she came [to see my play,  I’d be confused, because I thought that there’s no place in her heart that had me in it," says Duncan.

His parents knew they too were neglecting Duncan, but  they felt they had no choice. Carrick’s drug habit was their priority. Until they could get her off drugs, almost every hour was  consumed with her. The emotional wear and tear was ravaging.

In mid-October, they found out Carrick had lost the job in the clothing store, after just two weeks. Her boyfriend called them threatening to throw her out because she was stealing from him. And they heard from Carrick herself — they thought they heard an emotional plea in a garbled message left on their answering machine.

RESOURCES Faces & Voices 2005 Rising! Recovery in Action Summit September 6-8 Substance Abuse Treatment Facility Locator: U.S. Department of Health Human Services Silenttreatment.info Strugglingteens.com Narcotics Anonymous Referral Helplines operated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment: 1-800-662-HELP More resources

It was something about detox, and it was something they wanted to hear. Detox was what she needed to cleanse her body of heroin.

But they’d heard it before. In the last two years, Carrick had been in detox clinics for heroin half a dozen times.

Deirdre immediately tried to find an open bed in a local detox clinic.

Later that day, Deirdre and Thom dropped Carrick off at a detox clinic, but Carrick doesn't stay.

Thom was angry but resolved not to let her come into the house unless she was ready to go into detox. He put a sleeping bag in his car for her. Later that night, he was relieved to see her sleeping in the front seat of the family station wagon parked outside the house.

In the middle of the night, Carrick found a way into the house. By morning, after another round of phone calls, her mother once again located a hospital bed for her at a detox clinic.

Later that day, Carrick agreed to let Deirdre take her to the detox clinic. Carrick didn’t bolt. She completed three days in detox and then went home to Hastings.

A few weeks later, to her parents delight, she agreed to admit herself to a two year program in upstate New York to get the crucial rehabilitation her father believed she needed. As her father drove her there, he was hopeful that this, at last, was her turning point.

But on the drive to the facility, Thom had inklings that Carrick wasn’t quite ready to commit herself.

When Carrick arrived at the rehab center, the administrators immediately sent her to another detox clinic, because her vital signs were so low. After five days there, Carrick refused to return to the rehabilitation program and checked herself out. She was back on the streets.

When her parents found out, they were devastated. They realized that once again, she had been lying to them — saying she wanted to get clean while still wanting to get high. 

"That’s the insidious thing about heroin," says Thom.  "I mean, once you become addicted, you’re not normal unless you’re on it.  So, when we thought she was normal, normal had become a junkie."

The Forbes had reached a decisive moment in their struggle to save their daughter. Everything they had done to help Carrick in the last five years hadn’t worked.

"We are living testimony to the fact that 'Just say no' does not work in and of itself," says Thom.

It was time to change their strategy: Thom and Deirdre made the commitment to each other that if Carrick called and wasn't in a rehab, or on her way, they weren't going to talk to her.

"We’ll help her recover, we’ll help her get sobriety.  But we’re not going help her remain an addict," says Deirdre.

The Forbes cut Carrick out of their lives
In November, three months after we met the family, Deirdre and Thom agreed not to let their daughter come back into their lives until she was serious about giving up drugs - knowing full well that she could die in the meantime.

In November, two weeks after they had made this decision, Carrick showed up at their front door. They didn’t let her in. The Forbes kept to their word and had Thanksgiving without their daughter.

Her parents had no idea that Carrick spent that holiday in a tough New York jail, Riker's Island,  serving two weeks for stealing pain killers and using a tampered identification card.

At Christmas, it was Duncan who received the most gifts... the parents had focused on Carrick for so long. Now it was his turn.

"This is so sad but when she finally left— and that insanity and those tornadoes kind of went away— he started to blossom," says Deirdre.

While Duncan was opening his gifts in Hastings, unbeknownst to her family, Carrick was living in a  basement apartment with no running water on the lower east side of Manhattan. Four months after "Dateline" met her, Carrick had started to speedball— using a dangerous combination of cocaine and heroin at the same time.

After a month of no word from Carrick, she called home in early January to ask her mother to take care of her and her boyfriend’s sick dog. Her mother was softening but her father was resolute.

"I was the one who you know kept wanting to take her back," says Deirdre. "Or I wanted to go meet her and he wouldn’t even go see her. And the reason I kept wanting to do that was the fear that, well, what if something happens to her? And I never made that last reach out? But then there really came a point where I remember that she’s gone. This is it. I’ve really lost her.'”

In February, six months after "Dateline" met the family, the Forbes agreed to let Duncan move into Carrick’s  bedroom which was bigger than his.  While Thom was cleaning it out, he made a sickening discovery: Used packets of heroin. Thom was used to finding a dozen or so around her room, but this was substantially more.

That same afternoon, all his disgust was swept away when he found something that reminded him of the little girl he loves so much. “I see things like  she collects, odd shaped rocks —it really brings it home, we are so much alike,” says Thom.

During the period when her parents didn’t allow Carrick, Deirdre blossomed as well. She began working at an organization that helped women deal with addiction.

In March, four months since her mother had seen her, Carrick called and asked Deirdre to meet her for lunch.  Deirdre brought a garbage bag filled with Carrick’s clothing, and later told Thom how disturbing it was to watch her essentially homeless daughter rummage through it.

“I was just seeing in front of me this real street person desperately looking for clothes that they found on the street. It was really hard watching her do this,” says Dierdre.

That day, the most important news Carrick had for her mother was almost ignored: Carrick told her she was getting methadone, a treatment for heroin, from New York City’s Mt. Sinai hospital.

But she had lied to her parents so many times about rehab and recovery that they hesitated to believe her.

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