C.B. & ME
October 17, 1989
“Dear Bob,
This picture is of me and my dog (C.B. and me). The C.B. stands for Cool Breeze. Fourteen months earlier I was 80 lbs lighter and laying in bed dying in a comma. I was given a chance to pull through, but I realized it was hard for me to eat. I was always nauseated and in pain. I also couldn’t concentrate on my future because I was freaked out by aspects of my death. Certain medications like morphine and Demerol and even Tylenol #3 left me incapable of handling my personal affairs and I needed to get my personal affairs in order in the event of my death.
A friend of mine would come and pick me up at the hospital from time to time and we would drive to the country, smoke marijuana, and talk about things. I found after a while when we did this I was no longer only dealing with the aspects of Death and Dying. I was dealing with the aspects of Death and Dying and the will to live. Now I feel I have more of the will to live and I only consider Death and Dying because everyone should get their store in order, but you should live everyday to its fullest until you kick the bucket.
A Bad Day Living is Better Than a Good Day Dead.
Anyway, after I left the hospital I found that as I smoked marijuana I wasn’t nauseated as often. I wasn’t suffering from pain as often and, when I was, I would smoke marijuana and I was able to overcome or endure the pain and the nausea other medications couldn’t help me with. Psychologically it helps me control the panic that tries to arise every time they say I’m going to die, including my doctor, family, and friends. Numerous times my doctor has dealt straight with me and told me how long she thought I had left to live. Now she feels I will not live through the winter. I told her no offense but I’m going to try and prove her wrong, again.
Unfortunately I do not have a safe or reliable source to obtain my marijuana anymore. Now I am starting to have medical problems (pain and nausea) and starting to lose my will to overcome my doctor’s diagnosis of my lifespan as well as my illness. There is no comparison; when I have my marijuana I usually am capable of doing my chores in my house and in my yard and also taking care of my personal affairs. When I don’t have it; it usually isn’t long before I start having problems and I am unable to even get out of bed for long periods of time. Most of the time I can’t get out of bed until I get help or marijuana.
I’m not trying to get high in my final days. My friends with AIDS are put on morphine and Demerol. After that, eventually most of them started their dying process. These drugs can be fatal. It messes with your dreams and Hell is in your dreams. I don’t want these drugs. I want to use marijuana in what might be my final days. At least then I’m comfortable sleeping or awake and I can feel like I’m alive until the day I die, not dying until the day I die.
Marijuana helps me believe something that someone else said: “I’m not dying from AIDS, I’m living with AIDS.”
There’s a big difference between the two.
I have survived 27 months and 2 days or 824 days with full blown AIDS. There is only one other person in my support group that has lived longer than me and no others have survived the average life expectancy of 18 to 24 months. Marijuana helps me with the emotional pain suffered as I deal with my friends’ illness and their dying. I’ve lost about 28 friends from AIDS in the last year and a half. My very best three friends died from AIDS within the first six weeks of this year. My father also died of cancer.
My doctor and my social worker talked to me privately together and told me I was handling it too well and they were worried about me snapping from the strain eventually and not being able to overcome whatever problem that would come up. So they talked me into something they said would prevent that. They gave me tranquilizers. Within a week they said I wasn’t making rational sense anymore and decided to give me something else. Every week or two they would change my prescription to something else. Eventually to Halcion sleeping pills.
That was all I could stand. Not only did I come down with a case of meningitis of the brain, but also I suffered from a chemical imbalance. Every time I would try to talk to anybody all I did was cry. They even put me on the psych ward for 18 hours. I asked my doctor to let me out and a friend of mine helped me get some marijuana and within two hours I was home mowing my yard, cleaning my house (washing dishes), and straightening out my personal affairs.
Before I smoked marijuana that day I couldn’t even get out of bed for the last six weeks much less talk to anybody without crying uncontrollably. I’m convinced marijuana helps. My doc, friends with and without AIDS are convinced it helps me, and my family is convinced it helps me. Even the sheriff and the assistant D.A. said if I need it and it helps me then I should have it. I’ll always do everything I can to obtain marijuana legally. I’ve tried for over two years now and it’s been painful and frustrating but I think I’m finally achieving my goal.
However, if I’m denied access to it legally I will do everything I can to obtain it, almost any way I can, until I finally get it legally or die. It’s my healing medicine as well as my coping medicine. The people who discriminate against marijuana are not sick and don’t have as much to lose as I do.
They probably never tried it and most of them prefer alcohol. I can’t drink alcohol. It increases the AIDS virus activity in the blood by 250 times. Marijuana doesn’t increase the AIDS virus activity. I feel it slows it down so the other medicines are more effective against the AIDS virus. They said I wouldn’t last my first 3 weeks with AIDS. Then my doc told me if I was lucky and took real good care of myself I might last a year. Not only have I survived 27 months but the first 18 months after my first serious bout with AIDS I trimmed trees, hauled brush, chopped firewood and sold it in Lubbock and San Antonio and I hardly had any problem worth mentioning to my doc. I gained back 80 lbs. and a couple more, and most of my strength, and all of my hair.
My doc and many others in the hospital and the AIDS Foundation and my community asked me what I was doing that the dead and dying didn’t and aren’t doing. I do marijuana therapy and plan future goals of getting cured and married and raising drug free kids. Not much else except I pray a lot.
Eight months after I got out of the hospital in May of 1988 I cut down a pecan tree that was over 200 years old. It was over 100 feet tall and the base was 44 ½ inches in diameter. I cut the tree down and hauled all the brush and firewood away. I also saved a piece that is 16 feet long and 44 ½ inches in diameter. It weighed about 8 tons. I loaded it up onto a trailer and hauled it to my property about 20 miles away. A friend of mine has a machine that he’s going to use to slice this trunk up into lumber. Another friend of mine is going to build me a coffin out of lumber (the old cowboy style, with wide shoulders and narrow feet).
I feel with all my heart, marijuana has helped me to recuperate from my illness. To regain my strength and maintain my emotional stability to achieve these things I have done in my life since that day in August 1987 when the nurse was holding my hand and she told me “ Steve, you’ve got to quit talking about those tree jobs you want to do because you will never leave this room alive again.”
It was only a few days after that I started smoking marijuana away from the hospital and now the head nurse was so sure that I was going to die soon is one of my biggest supporters of my marijuana use. She has always told me since then that if anybody can beat AIDS Steve L. can or at least go down after one heck of a fight, with a smile on my face and all my personal affairs in order including my funeral and having my coffin built from a tree I cut down after they thought I would never leave the hospital room again.
Marijuana is good medicine and I’m a good guy with a good dog. The attitude that marijuana helps me to maintain is I have every reason to live for but I can accept whatever is the final outcome. I appreciate everything you can do to help me get my medicine.
Steve
(C.B. & Me)
Editor’s note: With Steve’s letter there were numerous character references from friends and individuals with which he had worked. There were also several poems which Steve wrote after he was diagnosed with AIDS. They are reprinted on the following pages.
Steve died on February 12, 1990, in the Audie Murphy VA Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. He was buried on February 14 with full military honors. Before his death, Steve had placed C.B. in the care of one of his closest friends in Hunt County, Texas.
Cutting down the last tree
C.B. and me, we’re the tree trimmers of Hunt
We’re not very big, just a couple of runts
We drive a chevy truck, with tools on the floor
You see us burning brush, during rain downpour
I’ve been kinda sick and I think C.B. knows that
Sometimes I’m skinny and sometimes I’m fat
We do a lot of work, when I feel good
We spend a lot of time, deep in the woods
Ol’ timers tell you, how it should be done
A whole lot of work, with just a little bit of fun
If you make a mistake, and feel awful shame
You know that it’s you and no one else to blame
I can deal with that, just leave me alone
Give me a coke and give C.B. a bone
Let us work or let us play
When we’re feeling good we don’t care what they say
If the time does come soon for me to die
My family and friends will mourn and cry
But God please help C.B. to understand
She is a good dog and I’m a tree trimming man
August 29, 1988
The Day Before The Day After
Living life the way things occur
Saying yes ma’am and saying yes sir
Getting a phone call and being afraid
Sorry Steve you’re positive, now you have AIDS
I ask what to do now, as I try not to fall
On the line I hear nothing, nothing at all
I want to be comforted by someone I don’t know
She said, “Steve I’m sorry, but now I must go.”
Two years and a half, have past since then
Other sick people are now my best friends
Some days are very hard and I try not to cry
As I pray that my friends and I may not die
Life is real different and filling with stress
I’ll hang in there ol’ buddy, I’ll do my best
I believe I will win, I want to be strong
By wanting to live, I don’t think that I’m wrong
March 8, 1988
The Visitors Side
Watching the game, from the visitors side
Rooting and yelling, with obvious pride
The home team bench, fresh painted and packed
While over on my side, the paint’s peeling, the boards cracked
The home team players are big and react from the yells
Play after play, they’re giving my team hell
The score is the Judge, it tells who is the best
The winners have more, the losers have less
My team isn’t winning, but I yell and I hope
We may not win, but maybe we can cope
I watch my team intensely and to my surprise
I can see myself, in each of their eyes
There were no mistakes, they didn’t really fail
They always got up, after each time they fell
Though they had lost, at the sound of the gun
They jogged off the field, still their father’s son
The time’s run out and the lights are turned down
The home team left and there’s no one around
I realize then with personal pride
Life in this world, is lived from the visitor’s side
August 29, 1988
What I think about the cross I carry
Sometimes I’m not in a rush
to get cured
Because certain personal things about me
Have matured
Hope and thanks to the lord
for giving me hope
Indifference to death,
for helping me cope
November 1988
Marijuana
Please let me be me
It’s helped me sit and just watch TV
We’re perfectly happy C.B. and me
It’s helped me to relax and just be calm
You can ask my brother, you can ask my mom
Without it I’ll just speed-up or cry
Perfectly honestly, I’d much rather die
I won’t kill myself, I’m very much sure
My ambition in life is to hang on till I’m cured
I’ll try to be good and not get caught again
But if I do, I’ll still be your friend
I don’t mean to yell, moan, or whine
But if I slip up please understand and be kind.
C.B. and me
March 31, 1989
Your honor
We’re innocent
We’re only trying to cope
To PaPa Bear, and Connie and all the bear cubs cadets
One way or the other we’ll win, so don’t you fret
They weren’t really ready for this one you know
No matter what happens, I’m ready to show
People with AIDS, need whatever they can get
But they don’t need a shove and they don’t need a hit
We’ll try it their way, the legal way you see
But no matter what happens, we still got to be
If they can’t personally help us, or give us a hug
Please leave us alone with our coping drug
No matter what is their perception
Whether legal or illegal, we need our prescription
Now that it’s come down to this maybe they’ll see
No matter what the verdict we still got to be
We will always do our best to what we’re told
And if we don’t survive this, we’ll catch ya on down the road
April 2, 1989
Steve L. became the first person with AIDS to receive legal access to marijuana for therapeutic use. He died on February 12, 1990. He died before his case could come to trial. “
THIS CONTENT IS PART OF “PROJECT 50”
