Article: A reporter explores his own dark, painful past ; "The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own" by David Carr (Simon & Schuster, 400 pages).

F. Scott Fitzgerald maintained there are no second acts in American lives. He never met David Carr.

In his shocking, often spellbinding memoir, Carr, media columnist for the New York Times, revisits his nightmarish opening act - as a cocaine addict in Minneapolis in the '80s. Carr was not simply a Hoover with a bad habit. He was a man on fire, the kind that party animals back away from slowly, shaking their heads in dismay.

He was introduced to the drug on his 21st birthday, going into a restaurant bathroom to sniff it: "It was a Helen Keller hand-under- the-water moment. Lordy, I can finally see. Cold fusion, right there in the bathroom stall; it was the greatest feeling ever. My endorphins ...

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