Drugs, Health / Wellness

Colons, Cocaine & Cancer

Addiction can kill in many ways...

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(Photo of Chapel Hill Cemetery by Ildar Sagdejev via Flickr)

(Photo of Chapel Hill Cemetery by Ildar Sagdejev via Flickr)

I had a dream the other night about a friend who passed away from colon cancer and addiction. It jarred me to the core. At fifty-six years old, I still have not had a colonoscopy. Like trips to the dentist, I keep putting it off as something unpleasant. The morning after the dream, I made the call and scheduled it. Mike would probably still be alive today if he had made the call, but cocaine addiction intervened and provided the excuses.

I got the phone call from Mike on a unusually cold Dallas winter day in 2001. He had not been feeling well for quite some time. On and off bouts with the flu, so he thought. After all, he lived in Chicago. Brutal winters. An outdoor job. Like me, Mike was a cocaine addict. My trips to Chicago to visit him always involved tense visits to seedy parts of town to score from his dealer. Hotel rooms and all night cocaine binges were a regular staple. The cocaine money would run out. The weekend would end. I would head back to Dallas and my addict life. He would stay in Chicago in his. Addicts never really think about the lifestyles of other addicts. We count on them being the same. The quest for white powder to drive the masking of pain, guilt, childhood and loss.

My drive was for the acceptance of a thirteen-year-old bullied little boy. To change a horrifying reflection, I saw in the mirror. The drive for the elusive feeling of being loved and accepted. Mike’s was wrapped around loss. The loss for Mike was profound. The loss of a son. His only son at the time. A tragic July 4th weekend years before. The pain. The guilt. The blame. He would never recover. His marriage would never recover. The descent into addiction. My problems seemed trivial in comparison. Addiction does not distinguish between the trivial and the tragic.

I picked up the phone. The news on the other end was tragic. “Brian, I have stage four colon cancer.” I am going to die.” I knew Mike had not been feeling well but we went fairly long periods without talking to each other. Busy in our lives. Busy in our addiction. Too busy to be that one person who is told all. The person who can help. Until the moment that hopefully moves us into recovery, no addict wants to help. We want enablement. I wanted to make those trips to those seedy areas when I visited. Our only talk about life’s problems came during the late night inhibition-released cocaine binges. Binges that would begin to mask the changes his body was going through and tell his brain that it was simply the hangover, the all nighter, the drinking. He would ultimately recover. Nothing permanent. One day his urine changed color. His life changed, along with everyone who knew and loved him.

A long silence on the phone as I processed what Mike just told me. Going through the stages of denial and grief within a split second. If I couched the response properly I would hear something different.

“Calm down, tell me what’s going on.” Are you sure? He was sure.

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December 13, 2004. A trip to Chicago. Brutal Cold. Snow. One last time. We would see the Dallas Mavericks play the Chicago Bulls with his other son and another good friend. There was no venture into the seedy area to obtain drugs. I knew Mike was still using despite undergoing chemo and experimental treatments. He had to wear extra heavy clothing to compensate for the chilling effect of chemotherapy and experimental treatment. The cancer was spreading. He had given up hope. A new son did not ease the pain. A marriage that had failed in the quagmire of guilt and blame amidst the loss of the first. We never spoke of hope. We would no longer speak of our demons that drove us to the crack house underbelly of Chicago. He was still making them.  Addiction became all he had left.

February 2017. My dream the other night. Free of the drug demons and cocaine binges for almost ten years. I am thirteen years old in the house I grew up in. Searching for the cold blue lock box where my father often kept money and coins from his trips abroad. As a child, I loved to explore it and steal mementos of his trips to foreign lands so mysterious to me. I would look up the counties in the bound volumes of Britannica Encyclopedia that were a staple in so many baby boomer homes. I think he purposely left it unlocked to allow me to begin my exploration of other cultures. Once again it was unlocked. This time there were photos. Photos of Mike and myself. In my dream, I began to cry uncontrollable heart wrenching sobs of a little boy mourning. Mourning a loss that had not yet occurred. I awake from my dream in the middle of the sobbing.

Mike passed away from colon cancer on June 5, 2005. He was forty-six years old. Not the way we often hear about with substance use disorders, but a casualty of addiction nonetheless. In his life, he was a father, a friend, an addict. I miss him.

BrianCubanBrian Cuban (@bcuban) is The Addicted Lawyer. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, he somehow made it through as an alcoholic then added cocaine to his résumé as a practicing attorney. He went into recovery April 8, 2007. He left the practice of law and now writes and speaks on recovery topics, not only for the legal profession, but on recovery in general. He can be reached at brian@addictedlawyer.com.

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