The end of hitting rock bottom

SHORTLY AFTER 1 A.M. on March 27, Susan Knade awoke to the sound of her cellphone ringing. It was her 21-year-old daughter, Caroline, calling. She was crying.
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Please, Caroline said. Please, come pick me up.

Nine hours before, the woman running the halfway house had told Susan that Caroline could stay so long as she passed a drug test after the weekend. But something had happened. Caroline had been kicked out. She was calling from a 7-Eleven, she said, and entering heroin withdrawal.

Susan instinctively reached for her keys, then stopped herself. Her Al-Anon group had a phrase for intervening like this — standing in the way of miracles. What if this was the moment Caroline was supposed to hit bottom and turn her life around? But Susan couldn’t shake the darker image: her little girl, at a convenience store counter, alone in a strange city. Afraid.

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