‘Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme story….’ Quincy Brown begins in his inimitable manner, unable to keep his flair for performance at bay even as he broaches the most serious of subjects.
Familiar to many as a thespian, singer, erstwhile radio journalist and folk storyteller, Brown is a household name in the Cayman Islands.
But this time he wants to tell a less well-known story. This one is about the other Quincy Brown.
It is a story about alcohol and drug dependence, about mental health challenges, and life on the street.
Like all the best stories, it has a lesson. And, despite the tragic elements, it is told with plenty of humour. It is a cautionary tale but one that carries with it the possibility of redemption.
“What is it called, Jekyll and Hyde? Two Quincys, split personalities – the good and the bad?” he muses.
“I actually think I have more than two personalities. It is the thespian in me. Being artistic is a blessing and a curse.”
‘Guilty as sin’
Brown, now 43, was speaking to the Compass two months after being released from Northward prison after admitting to possession of a ‘$10 crack rock’. He was behind bars for just one week, before entering a recovery programme.
The entertainer has struggled with alcoholism since the moment he took his first sip as a teenager. He acknowledges he has been addicted to crack cocaine for 12 years.
“I am a disgrace to the fellowship,” he says, of his previous attempts to enter Alcoholics Anonymous programmes.
Now living at a halfway house in West Bay, the native ‘Bracka’ is determined that this time it will stick. He remembers exactly when he had his last hit of cocaine – 23 Nov. 2023, the day he was due in court.
The judge, at his hearing, drew reference to his positive urine sample and questioned if he had recently used drugs.
“I said ‘yes, right up until this morning, your worship’. I think she was flabbergasted at how open I was, but I had nothing to hide.”
When asked to enter a plea to the charges of possession and consumption of cocaine, he answered, with trademark theatricality.
“Guilty as sin.”
The charges date back to May of last year when Brown was arrested with the drugs outside the public bathroom of a cemetery on the night of the Cayman Brac Braccanal Carnival.
He says he asked the officer, briefly adopting an Irish accent, “Would you mind if I finish it first?”
‘Cocaine became my master’
Though there are comic elements to his story, Brown, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder almost two decades ago, is equally frank about the moments of despair.
“The past two or three years of my life have been a living hell,” he said, recounting his relapse during the COVID lockdown, after two years of sobriety.
When the borders closed during COVID, he lost his job as a tourism ambassador at the airport, and ended up spending his subsequent tourism worker stipend on drugs, until, he says, it was revoked as a consequence.
“Cocaine became my master. I was spending at last $50-a-day on crack and I would do anything short of stealing to get it,” he said.
“Your sin will take you farther than you want to go and keep you longer than you plan to stay.”
His brief stint at HMP Northward had a profound impact on him. People knew ‘the other Quincy’ – the thespian and singer – and made assumptions that he worked hard to dispel.
“I had to man up, fast,” he said.
He gives thanks to “God and to my lawyer” that he was able to get into Drug Court and from there to Caribbean Haven and now a halfway house, where his recovery is supervised and monitored by the courts.
So far, it is going well, he says, and he is grateful for the second chance he has been given.
“I would be on the streets tonight if it were not for the halfway house,” he said.
“We need more places like that all over the Cayman Islands.”
Brown has been homeless for spells as a result of alienating friends and family during stints of drug and alcohol abuse.
“I’ve slept in cars. I’ve slept on the beach. I’ve slept in bathrooms. I’ve slept close to a liquor store with a piece of tarpaulin over me…”
Over the past month, the Compass has written about homelessness and the links to mental health and drug problems in Cayman. Brown, a storyteller and a journalist who has experienced that side of life on the islands, has some insight into the extent of the issues and possible solutions.
He points to the sense of displacement among some Caymanians as a root cause of addiction and mental health challenges.
“We have developed so much. Athens, Greece, didn’t develop as fast as we have…
“We were a sleepy little village in George Town and West Bay this morning, I could see the beach this afternoon, and now at sunset I can’t see the beach for buildings and condos. What effect does that rapid development have on the native psyche?”
A chance to change
When he was 40, Brown says he had a premonition that he had only another 10 years to live.
Whether it was drug psychosis, mysticism or something else, he says he took it seriously.
“I am not afraid to die but I do want to leave this world better than how I found it. And I want to return to the normal Quincy Brown – contributing to arts, culture, theatre and broadcasting and working with the young people.”
Though his current abstinence is court ordered, he insists that if drugs were legalised tomorrow, he would not be interested. What time he has left, he wants to dedicate to making the most of his talents.
He says he aims to collaborate with the National Drug Council and others to spread a positive message to Cayman’s youth. This includes efforts, along with Pastor Chris Murray of Boyz2Men and Simon Miller of the National Drug Council, to bring American motivational speaker Rich Barnes’ ‘Say No to Drugs and Alcohol Conference’ to Cayman.
“My call is to serve people,” Brown said. “It’s to be a voice for the people. It’s to get my hands dirty and work. It’s to bring about change.
“In six years time, I will not die of a crack overdose or cirrhosis of the liver. It is my intention, one day at a time, not to return to alcoholism and not to return to drug addiction.”
This time, he insists, “the comeback is personal”.
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