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ADDICTION: FROM TRIVIAL TO TRAGIC W by Brian Cuban
INTER 2004. LAS Vegas. Miami. Los Angeles. All places that hide my secrets. Drugs delivered to my hotel room in Vegas. Coke deals done with quick hand-tohand exchanges under the cover of darkness just feet from the calming waves of the ocean in South Beach. I often require a high-end backdrop for the high-end product I was purchasing. It makes me feel like the false image I tried so hard to project. Of course, the dealers I meet donât care about the ambience, they just want to make the sale and not be seen today.
However, itâs a bitterly cold day in Chicago hundreds of miles from any sun or ocean. No drug deals along the scenic shores of Lake Michigan this evening. Iâm cruising the crack dens and dilapidated housing projects of Chicago. Iâm terrified, but Iâm not alone. My friend, Mike, a cocaine addict like me, knows where the best blow is. My trips to Chicago to visit him always involve tense visits to seedy parts of town to score from his dealer. We move on to a high-end hotel room where all the booze and drug binges are a regular staple. The cocaine money eventually runs out. The weekend ends.
with addiction often donât think about the lifestyle of others with the same problems. The impulse isnât to think about the way their families might be torn apart or the grief, anger, and despair that might be a prison in the same way coke addiction might be. The quest for the white powder to drive the masking of pain, guilt, childhood, and loss. I have my secrets. Mike has his. My drive is for the acceptance of an obese 13-year-old bullied little boy looking for that first kiss. A date to the prom to change a horrifying reflection that I saw in the mirror. To feel like a real lawyer while I swam in a sea of self-doubt and self-loathing. The drive for the elusive feeling of being loved and respected.
Mikeâs struggles are touched by lossâprofound lossâthe loss of a son, his only son at the time. A tragic July 4th weekend years before, I represented Mike and his wife for the accident. I bumbled my way to a settlement on a case I never should have taken in his jurisdiction. I wasnât licensed to practice there, but I needed the money to fund my addiction and hoped it would settle before I had to farm it out to a competent lawyer in Chicago.
I head back to Dallas in my life of cocaine, booze, and clinical depression.
Money and drugs over ethics and even caring friendship. A scenario that has played out many times among many addicted lawyers.
He stays in Chicago, immersed in addiction, a failing marriage. In the trauma of the past, those dealing
The loss of Mikeâs son. The pain. The guilt. The blame. Mike would never recover.
RES IPSA LOQUITUR
His marriage would never recover. Addiction doesnât distinguish between the trivial and the tragic. Neither do secrets. I wait in fear while Mike goes into the housing project to score for our upcoming binge. My fear is not that heâll be harmed, but if that something goes wrong, I wonât be getting high. But, he emerges, our prize tucked away, and a smile on his face. Now thatâs a true friend. Thoughts of the grief he carries are out of my mind. Thoughts of my own depression, my own wrecked relationships seem miles away. Who needs family when youâve got friends like this? Another tragedy was around the corner for Mike, and it hadnât been revealed to either him or me. The progression of colon cancer. The day he called me to tell me he was dying is embedded in my memory as if it happened yesterday. There were signs. There were symptoms. In that phone call, he lamented, brushing them off as normal side effects of the constant alcohol and cocaine hangover. Then one day, his urine changed color. The color of the brutal reality of advanced colon cancer. Iâd see him only one more time before his death. We would take in a Dallas Mavericks/Chicago Bulls game on another brutally cold winter night in Chicago.
