CANCER AND ADDICTION DRAG MANY DOWN

Fighting drug addiction and cancer is a double whammy that often leads to a
relapse into substance abuse - whether your name is Darryl Strawberry or
John Smith, experts said.

"It's the same with someone with money or without money," said Adele
Smithers Fornaci, executive vice chairwoman of the National Council on
Alcohol and Drug Dependency. She's also a close friend of Strawberry, who
fled a drug treatment center last week. "There are many, many thousands of
people in same situation [as Strawberry ]," she added.

Relapse is "the nature of the beast," said Dr. William Breitbart, chief of
psychiatry at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. "The real struggle is
to keep the relapses at a minimum and keep the time between them as long as
possible."

The stress associated with the diagnosis of a potentially fatal disease
often is enough to trigger a relapse into substance abuse, experts said.
Other triggers can include chemotherapy drugs, which often induce
depression, nausea and fatigue.

Patients also may grow anxious if pain is not adequately treated, or if
chemo proves unsuccessful, Breitbart said.

In Strawberry's case, his trigger could be related to baseball. He skipped
out of rehab in October, when his two former teams met up in the World
Series. On Thursday, he disappeared again, days before baseball season was
to begin.

"The desire to run away from things that are very painful is a universal
human feeling," said Dr. Jennifer Downey of the New York Psychiatric
Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. "People who use
substances tend to be impulsive, sometimes more likely to act, if they feel
like running away."

Once on the lam, it's natural for patients to seek drugs because they want
to medicate themselves against feelings of distress, Breitbart said. The
challenge is to find meaning in other aspects of their life - in their
families or other activities, he added.