This book is the story of David Carr’s battle with drug addiction and all that came with it: cancer and single-parenthood. His addiction started with the occasional use of pot in high school and graduated to coke in college. Most students, for whatever reasons, start abusing drugs at high school or college. This book touches on what all students can identify with: the abuse of drugs or the temptation to.
One of the adverse effects of using drugs is major memory loss. Carr’s memory was affected so much that, to submit accurate information on his history of drug addiction, he had to interview a lot of people in his past to help him fill in and piece together bits of his past. He writes: “Over the course of two years of reporting and writing, the data accumulated began to tell a story that I thought I knew, but didn’t”. Carr admits that without the people he interviewed, there is not a chance he would have remembered enough to write this book. During his interviews, Carr found out that what he remembers wasn’t the truth.
Carr further points out how drug takes over one’s life so that everything that one does is only to feed that insatiable hunger for a dose; that one’s life revolves around obtaining the drug. For example, one of the ladies in the addiction forum mentioned how drugs took over her life. Not only did she have few friends but also her ability to communicate increasingly failed and only came out when she needed a dose. If she ever communicated with someone, it was because she could benefit from that person. Carr also talks of this in the book. He admits to using many people to satisfy his habit, even his relationship with Anna was intended to guarantee a steady supply of cocaine and more drug-related connections. He also used Frank to get to know the loan shark who lived in his street to gain access to more coke. Soon enough, Frank became a tool of Carr’s addiction.
Carr mentions that many of his friends went to jail, died, or had psychological problems because of drug addiction. For instance, Fred, a close friend of Carr who was also a drug addict, was found dead in a lake in Minnetonka. Carr himself lost his girlfriend Goolie, in the book he says “I lost my job, she [Anna] lost her business [drug dealing]. It would have ended there, but…Anna had twin girls” (22). The ladies in the forum also mentioned how they were exposed to death or trauma.
However, the addiction was not only a danger to the addicts themselves but other people as well, especially family members. Carr’s addiction, for instance, caused a lot of suffering to his children. During Anna’s pregnancy, they still used coke, exposing the babies to drug-related health problems. And after Carr had won the custody of his twins, he would leave them in the car, even during cold winter, to go to Eddie’s for doses of coke. These are part of the reasons for his children’s health problems. Carr writes of one medical test result on his children: “their medical records indicated that they had breathing and heart issues” (231). The fact that Carr knew his twins were increasingly getting exposed to danger, thanks to his addiction, but could not stop shows just how much of his life the drugs had taken over; that he could even disregard the need to take care of his children.
Carr also talks of how difficult it is to fight the addiction; that once addicted it is difficult to hold oneself from drug abuse. For instance, Carr explains his experiences regarding his attempts to quit drinking and doing coke. He says that sometimes he would party for months without drinking, but other times he would drink like the alcoholic that he once had been. It is only his fear of getting back to his dark days that kept holding him from returning to hard drugs. That fear notwithstanding, there was always the temptation nudging and pulling him back to those days.
Carr’s ultimate triumph, when he becomes a successful columnist with ‘The New York Times’, one of the most highly thought-of dailies in the world, becomes the climax of the good that “The Night of the Gun’ has in store for students. His victory against drug addiction preaches to the drug-addict students. It says if you have the will you can stop the habit. The almost graphic portrayal of his addiction, the cruelty of his habit against his children, his nullification of the myth that one can control a drug habit, his exploration of the difficult battle against addiction that many do not live to realize are all danger signs, a warning to those who haven’t touched drugs yet. The message is simple and clear; keep off. In a nutshell, Carr’s book speaks to both addicts and non-users. It has a strong message for all of them. This is a remarkable, necessary read for all students.
Works Cited
Carr David. The Night of the Gun. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008.