Addict

(Or, two women, two diagnoses)

There are a few kinds of survival that people don’t usually talk about in the same breath, but what if we could? Cancer and addiction both rewire our sense of control. Both live in the body long before and after rock bottom. And both can make living harder than it already is.

This piece is about two women daring to sit inside that truth together. It’s about exhaustion, humor, love, and the quiet grace of understanding someone fighting a different version of the same battle.

We are jealous of each other’s pain.

I have Stage IV melanoma.
She is wrestling addiction.
Each of us believes the other deserves more grace.

There is probably some beauty in saying that out loud, but neither of us can stand in that truth for long. We know better than to romanticize what breaks us. Knowing something is not the same as living it.

Our kids are in high school. We both felt stronger as parents when they were smaller and needed us in simple, physical ways. Make the snack. Zip the coat. Buckle the car seat.

Now they can sense our fear. They can smell it, I think. We tell ourselves we would do anything for them, yet there are days when neither of us manages to join the world before noon. While we never say it, it’s beginning to feel like we are modeling “do as I say, not as I do,” which we know is bullshit.

We do not want to die.
The amount of living we are doing is another question.

Today we are in my car, heading to my monthly immunotherapy infusion. Technically, I could make the trip alone. I know where to park and which elevator to take. I know which nurses will ask about my son and which ones will ask about my dog.

Still, it is safer to have someone drive home once the fatigue kicks in. Secretly, I also want her to hear a doctor say what we both badly need to believe: that care is more powerful than judgment.

She grips her bag as we pull into the garage.
“I am having a wicked panic attack,” she says.

“Why? You are not getting treatment.”

“I do not know. I just feel like I am in the way. Do I go in with you?”

I tell her yes. Oncologists are used to guests. If there is anything I do not want her to hear, she will not. The scans have been stable. What we are really confirming today is how long this phase of treatment will last.

I had secretly hoped I had heard it wrong the first time, that I would get a break around the holidays. Instead, my doctor reminds me that monthly infusions for two years is the plan.

Stable is the good word.
Final is not on the menu.

I hold it together at first. Then the words sink in and the edges of me go soft. Not a collapse. Just enough for tears.

My friend notices and pretends not to, sliding in her earbuds like she is giving me privacy, even though she is the only person I invited into this particular room.

When the appointment ends, I decide to test a theory.

“Hypothetically,” I say, “if I told you I started microdosing mushrooms to self-medicate and I was embarrassed because I thought you would be disappointed, you would still want to know, right?”

The doctor doesn’t hesitate.
“My job is to treat you,” he says. “Not to judge you.”

I look at her.
“See? Doctors want the truth.”

She rushes in.
“For the record, she is not microdosing,” she tells him. “That was for me, not her.”

She is only half right.
I am not doing it.
I am also not entirely convinced I should not be.

We walk out.
We get Sweetgreen.
I get my infusion.

She drives us home.

We talk about small things and big things, and also go a little quiet when there’s no more effort left for bravery and vulnerability.

I would like to say we learned that, given the choice, everyone would take back their own problems. That sounds neat and wise. It is also not true.

I would trade cancer for addiction, because I believe addiction can be beaten. I do not drink anymore, and I treat that as proof of something, even though I know it is not the same thing at all.

The truth is, I know very little about addiction, and assuming I could heal from it is arrogant at best and insulting at worst.

She might trade addiction for cancer, because people forgive illness faster than they forgive relapse. She believes cancer patients are innocent. I keep telling her I do not feel that way.

I carry a constant, low-grade guilt for the diagnosis and for the anger that comes with it. There is no substance to blame. No bottle, no pill, no needle. Only cells and the story I tell myself about what I should have done differently.

Still, she calls me a badass.

I tell her she is half right.
I am an ass.
Just not in the way she means it.

Shared with permission. Some details changed (privacy).

If you can’t tell this is an AI image, let me know, and I can show you. ;)