With so much happening in Season 3 of , FX’s Sons of Anarchy spin-off series, one story being told is among the most personal and devastating yet–and it has nothing to do with the Reyes brothers, EZ and Angel. This season has seen club member Coco (Richard Cabral) spiral out of control as he fell head-first into heroin addiction. Then, in the last episode, he went too far and overdosed.
Warning: The following contains spoilers from the latest episode of Mayans MC, “A Mixed-up and Splendid Rescue.” If you haven’t watched the new episode yet, you should stop reading now and catch up over at FX on Hulu.
When the seventh episode of this season, “What Comes of Handlin’ Snakeskin,” ended, viewers saw on the couch after overdosing on heroin. Thankfully, as the latest episode, “A Mixed-up and Splendid Rescue,” revealed, he managed to survive. That doesn’t mean he’s reached rock bottom, though.
While Coco assured his daughter Leticia (Emily Tosta) that he was going to get clean, along with his love interest Hope (Vanessa Giselle), by the end of this week’s episode, Hope had abandoned him and their quest for sobriety. And as Cabral told GameSpot, viewers shouldn’t be too surprised if he follows her back toward the drug.
“[We’ve] got to understand drug addiction and most of these people that go on this spiral of drug addiction, it’s not until later that they get clean, right? He is barely in the beginning [of the] process,” the actor explained. “This thing has him in a way that he doesn’t even understand. If it was his third [or] fourth time going back and forth, he would have an understanding [of] what is going to happen. But heroin is nothing to play with. Once it has you, it has you, right? So I think, in his mind, he’s saying things but he doesn’t truly understand that it’s not even the truth.”
The sooner he gets control of his addiction, the better, though. After all, not only is he gambling with his own life and inflicting intense emotional trauma on his daughter, there’s also the club to think about. As he sunk into this addiction, he stole from the club in order to keep them from finding out he was using heroin. We’ve seen on Sons of Anarchy what happens when you betray the club (we still miss you, Juice) and it never ends well. What’s more, according to Cabral, Coco knows that.
“But again, like him saying that he wants to get clean, there’s these thoughts but the addiction has him,” the actor said. “The drug has him so tight right now that he can’t act against [it]. But the reality is that yes, if the brothers find out they will kill him and he knows that. But, the heroin hangs on so tight right now that he can’t do nothing, that’s the reality. He is hooked on heroin. He is the slave to heroin.”
As someone that has been open about his own , this story of drug addiction is a personal one to Cabral. What’s more, though, it’s one that he believes speaks to a larger issue.
“Our nation is dying right now,” he said. “This is real, right? This is not something that happened 5-10 years ago, this issue is happening right now and people are dying by the hundreds, thousands, you know? So we’re addressing it, you know, this show Mayans is addressing that problem and I am the one that’s taking that on my back.”
Now fans just have to hope that by the end of this story, Coco has somehow managed to survive–both his addiction and those he’s wronged to feed it.
Mayans MC airs Tuesday on FX.
