I can’t really pinpoint the exact moment I knew that my brother had a drug problem, I think I knew for quite some time but I was afraid to say anything because I guess that would mean it became true. This probably sounds silly to those who have not been through something similar but if you were put in the same situation I think any normal person would understand. Firstly, I guess I believed that the whole thing was under control and would remain under control, how naive could I and everyone else have been?
Over the next few months and years secrets started forming between my brother and I, as well as my parents and my brother. I am not really sure if my other brother knew what was happening, but I guess he must have because they worked together and things were beginning to unravel at work. For me, I guess it started when he would beg for money before I would leave my home town to return to city where I worked, I really felt like I couldn’t do anything but say yes and give him the money because we both knew what the consequences would be if he didn’t come up with the money. That’s where the secrets came in, I kept this all a secret from my other brother and my parents because I was afraid of what sort of situation it would cause. Now I look back and I wonder how I could have been so stupid, did I just think the problem was going to go away or go unnoticed ? Who knows what I was thinking at the time, probably not much of anything useful. Slowly things started to unravel, I found out money had been going missing out of dad’s wallet, mum had found my brother in some compromising positions with implements that are not average things to sleep with, but when you are that wasted I guess you don’t know what you’re doing. There were occasions of much aggression and desperation and all the while we stayed oblivious to the fact.
The day that the situation really came home to me was when I was home for the weekend and he asked if he could use my phone to send a message as he and mum were having an argument and he had no credit on his phone. Of course I said yes and I am not really sure why but after he sent the message and I got my phone back, a couple of minutes later opened the message section of my phone and the previous message had been saved… the message read … ‘call me urgent need shot’. That was it, the penny really dropped. All of a sudden I became uncontrollably hysterical! I was sobbing and begging him, saying to mum ‘don’t let him go’. Then mum started crying but she didn’t know why I was crying, she kept asking me, what did it say and I just kept crying so much so that I couldn’t speak. Then I locked the doors with a key so he couldn’t get out and took his keys and wallet. He then became quite angry with me and threatened to call the police, I knew what I was doing was illegal but I didn’t care, I just had to do something. My heart hurt so much that I wanted my body to hurt too, to take away the other pain, so I challenged him, I told him to hit me, but he wouldn’t, then he was crying too, his body was in such pain and despair because I had locked him inside that he could do nothing but cry. Then my mum called my dad to ask him to come home from work and he did, and being the calm one, he spoke to my brother and then eventually let him go. I had to get out then, I wanted to run as far away as I could, I didn’t really know where to go, I had no one that I felt I could talk to, I just wanted to hide.
And so it began…. years of recovery, relapse, desperation, hatred, hurt, betrayal, so many emotions that even now I struggle to explain them. By the end of that year things were pretty bad, he had people after him, for his life, he was beaten up over money, we had many threats and we all basically had to watch our backs, which for me was a big thing because I am already afraid of my own shadow, I certainly didn’t need this! As that year drew to a close my cousin asked him if she came to our city to collect him would he go with her to detox. He said he would get on the plane cause he was in too deep and he had to escape from the life he had created, he was afraid. So he left, we were all quite devastated and I promised to see him in a few weeks when I had holidays, I had planned a trip to visit him to see how he was going and to give my cousin a break. So Christmas came and went, it was our first Christmas without the whole family and it was bleak! We had no Christmas tree, everything was rather depressing and I spent the whole morning crying on the phone to him, I just wanted everything to be back to normal. Truth was, I couldn’t remember when things had been completely normal… this whole saga had begun so long ago that I didn’t know for how long exactly it had been happening and when it would end.
This continued for the next 5 years, during this time he had many different girlfriends and friends who he managed to convince us were not taking drugs.. ‘the good influences’, we would later learn that each of these people would contribute to his down fall and he to theirs. He also had run ins with the law for possession and dealing, theft to mention just a few. It may sound stupid and a little naive, but to anyone who has lived with or is living with an addict, I think you will understand how much you want to believe the best and to hope that everything will be ok. To bury your head in the sand is better than facing facts (well, this is what we thought). During this time he went off to a really good rehab facility, but after some time he managed to convince us once again that everything was ok and he was ready to return home. However, his ‘friends’ would never allow his return without offering him a welcome home treat which would put him back on the roundabout of lies and destruction.
In the end, all of our lives revolved around him, we lived to make him better, to pay his bills and to hopefully help him to recover. I do believe that our love helped in in as many ways as it hindered him. By not allowing him to fall hard, we were enabling him to continue using (obviously we couldn’t see this at the time). All of us suffered from depression of some form, as we didn’t know how to deal with the situation or his lifestyle choices. In the end I decided to leave, to basically desert my family, but it was only because I realized that I had to make a life for myself rather than only living for my family and my brother in particular. This was the single most difficult decision I have ever had to make, but probably one of the best! It was the best decision for him and for me. By leaving it enabled him to improve his life without me to pick him up each time he fell. Sometimes in the struggle to survive one finds the strength and purpose to continue to live.
Current: My beautiful brother has returned to us, he is now almost 4 years clean. Each day we celebrate his life and appreciate where he has come from. We will never forget the past, but we now have the strength to move on. I believe this illness strengthened his relationship with my parents and my other brother and I. I guess it’s true, as the saying goes “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger”. I hope all of you who read this have the strength to continue to love and support your loved ones, even in the deepest moment of their addiction, the real person is still there, you just have to wait for them to reappear.
