Lost in Ghost Town: A Memoir of Addiction, Redemption, and Hope in Unlikely Places

This is an excellent page-turner that pulls you into its grip quickly into the first few pages. There are huge peaks and valleys in the tale of Carder’s journey from a charmed childhood of wealth and privilege which surprisingly lead into the lowest of the low places a person can end up. Addiction is not glamorous and often ends in death. Carder managed to sink from glamorous beginnings into situations that would have lead most people to their own demise. This novel weaves an interesting tapestry of individuals living the highest to the lowest lifestyles into a compelling tale that is hard to put down. It’s like when you’re driving, and there’s a terrible accident, and you don’t want to look at the carnage, but somehow you are pulled to feeling you must bear witness….this book felt like that at times. His redemption was a victory for all of those fighting addiction and all of those who have known or know someone in the throes of addiction. So glad to hear he lived to tell the tale…and what a tale it is.

Highly recommend, kept me up all night turning pages!

Carder Stouts new book Lost in Ghost Town is probably the best book about addiction and recovery that Ive ever read. One might think I write this because I know the author, but I am actually far more critical of Carders writing than is probably fair.
Lost in Ghost Town is a very personal book for me. I grew in Washington with Carder, but was never very close to him. He was one of the big kids who hung out with my sister and her friends. Carder was always kind to me, even at times when I was pretty sure he had no idea who I was. After college, when everyone ended up in New York for a while in the 90s, I would see Carder at bars and clubs and parties. My sister had grown up a ballet dancer and had become an actress, so her world and Carders swirled around again. I worked in a gallery and hung out with the art kids but often ended up at after hours parties at Carders apartment. I dont really remember much about those nights.
When all the drinking and all the drugs got to be too much for me to handle, and my Major Depressive Disorder got out of control, I escaped to Vermont.
The big kids all moved to L.A. I would hear about Carders escapades from my sister and from my sisters best friend Katherine, whom Ive known since I was seven and is like a sister to me. They would both complain about Carder the way sisters complain about a brother or cousins complain about each other. Even when he did or said pretty awful things, we were mostly worried about him.
My father was a brilliant, handsome, and charming narcissist with untreated bipolar disorder and a frightening addiction to alcohol and drugs. The fact that he was a physician made his addiction unbearable. He had an endless supply of drugs. When I was about seven and first realized I was suicidal, I used to pray that I wouldnt wake up in the morning. My fathers solution to my charming melancholy was to teach me how to empty bottles of allergy nasal spray and fill them with lidocaine. He gave me bottles of pills that made me so out of it that I barely knew where I was. Luckily I was so smart that I didnt have to worry about school. It all came easily to me.
I mention this because reading about Carders memoir, it would be easy to think he got what he deserved in many of the situations in which he found himself. One might think he didnt appreciate all the opportunities given to him, that he sabotaged his friendships and relationships, and that he could be cruel to those who loved him. However, he was never more viscous than to himself; to his own brilliant mind that he tried to destroy or the health of the body he gambled with for years.
For years after Carder got sober, I would be at parties in Washington and hear someone my age refer to crackhead Carder, and I would get furious and defend him. I remember once mentioning this to my sister, to Katherine, and her mother Kay. They all thought it made perfect sense. We all grew up in the same houses in the same neighborhoods. We all went to the same schools. We all screwed up.
Everyone we knew looked into the windows of each others houses and each others parentss houses. The difference with Carder is he has shown us his soul – as much as a person can. Hes brave enough to tell his story. It is a painful story of a boy who should have had it all but didnt. It is the real Carder Stout, a man who loves his family and his friends and wants to try to help others from both feeling the pain and causing pain to those he loves. Lost in Ghost Town is the story of a good man whos done the hard work and is someone I admire very much.

Carder Stout shares the story of a life that starts in the high society of Georgetown in Washington, DC, and the wooded campus of an elite New England boardingschool, to the fast partying social scenes of Manhattan and Hollywood Hills, and ultimately into the brutal streets of gang-controlled Venice Beach crack deals. Along the way, he shares the causes and effects of an addiction that serves as theengine driving his life downwards. But this is not a shallow narrative of a spoiled rich kid partying until the money runs out. It’s a first-hand account of the ranging context and impacts of drug abuse; and it’s ultimately an inspiring lesson about the value of solid friendship, respect and love. Stout’sstory is as much about the strength of character that he finds in himself and in individuals around him at the lowest points of his life as it is about the flaws and failures that pushed him there. It’s a riveting story that’s impossible toput down, full of deeply impactful perspective and invaluable insight.

Dr. Carder Stout, PhD was raised in a magnificent house in Georgetown and attended elite schools. To an outsider, he had everything growing up, but in actuality he yearned for love and attention from his parents who were largely absent. This deep emotional void led to Stout going from leading a truly privileged life to being an addict living on the streets of Ghost Town, an area of Venice California controlled by Shoreline Crips crack dealers. It is there Stout becomes a driver for drug king-pin Flyn and is welcomed into Flyn’s family by his maternal grandmother. Through this unlikely friendship, Stout begins to find connectivity and self-worth which ultimately gives him the strength to turn his life around. Stout is a natural storyteller and his memoir is soulful, honest and unpretentious. I couldn’t put it down. It’s extraordinary he survived.

Such an amazing and inspiring read. I couldnt put it down once I started and read the whole thing in less than 2 days. I love how it is written with aspects of light hearted naivety mixed with the low and sad reality of addiction as well as the dark side of the city that some of us have never seen. Carders story is inspiring and heart wrenching and makes you feel every emotion you can think of from sadness, to anger, to hope and everything else on the spectrum. Highly recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with or know anyone that has struggled with addiction, or anyone who is just in for an interesting and roller coaster of a read.
Get this book, you wont regret it.

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