Feeling lost in California
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: California
Posts: 2
Feeling lost in California
Hello all,
I'm new here. First post! I’m super thankful to have found this forum. It’s comforting to know that others understand the pain of having an addict in your life, and it’s crazy how many different stories run along parallel lines.
The alcoholic in my life is my big brother. He’s 26 now. I’m 23.
He has always struggled with ADD and anxiety, and I think these were major risk factors for him. He started smoking and drinking in high school, when he was about 16. To me, his drinking and smoking (cigarettes and pot) were never “just some high school experimentation”—it was always scary as hell to me. At 13, of course I didn’t understand what alcoholism was, but I think somehow I always knew he had a problem. I remember times when he would get drunk or high alone. I hated that all my brother wanted to do with me was get high, and it drove me crazy never knowing whether he was under the influence or not. Often, I was aware of things my parents weren’t, but I only told on him once. No kid wants to be a rat.
When I was in college and we were both home for the holidays, we’d go out and about and I’d find myself on an alcohol run with him. He was familiar with all the liquor stores around town. If I was driving, I’d tell him no. It was back in 2013 that I first acknowledged to myself that he was an alcoholic. My mom used that word, too, and we cried together.
A few times recently when we’ve been together, he’s drunk 6-9 beers a day. Usually, I lose count. When I come home, I often find empty beer and whiskey bottles stashed in random cabinets. I also know sometimes he stops drinking altogether. I don’t think it lasts more than a few weeks or months. He has said to our mom that sometimes, he “hates himself so much, he just wants to destroy himself." He acknowledges he has a problem and has told me that he “just likes getting drunk so much” and that once he starts drinking, he cannot stop. He gets angry easily whether he’s drunk or sober, but he’s never been violent or verbally abusive to anyone in my family when he’s drunk.
Over the summer, I came home one day and found him passed out on the kitchen floor with an empty bottle of whiskey. He thought I was our dog at first. When our mom came home and found the warm spot on the floor, he told her he’d taken a nap. She believed him. I didn’t figure it would do her any good to know. It destroyed me, though.
I don’t know what’s real anymore. When I think of him as an alcoholic, I feel like I’m being dramatic. When I don’t acknowledge his alcoholism, I feel like I’m ignoring reality. It’s all too dark to even imagine, let alone live in real life. I don’t really know how much he drinks or how long his sobriety lasts, because he lives in another state. He drives drunk. I don’t know how often. I know things could be a lot worse.
Sometimes, I think of my brother as having a terminal illness. I don’t know how to be with him or live my life while I wait for him to die. From what I’ve read, he could get sick and die tomorrow, or he could live to be 80 with no health problems.
He wants to go to college and study chemistry. He wants to get a dog. He wants to have kids someday. I don’t have faith he is stronger than his disease.
I have let go of some of my hope of having a happy relationship with my older brother, the kind where you visit and enjoy each other, communicate regularly, and help raise each other’s kids. I plan on protecting myself from him so as to suffer less, but I will never abandon him. I love him more than anyone in the world.
My parents acknowledge he is an alcoholic, and they try to avoid enabling him. We don’t talk about it much, though. I don’t think we’re exactly in denial. It’s just nobody knows what to do.
I suppose I mainly came here to share my story with people who get it. Some questions I have are:
-What about my story resonates with yours? What do you do?
-What can I expect of my brother’s life? Is there any hope?
-What do you wish you had known about alcoholism a long time ago? What do you understand about this disease?
Anything you’d like to share would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.
I'm new here. First post! I’m super thankful to have found this forum. It’s comforting to know that others understand the pain of having an addict in your life, and it’s crazy how many different stories run along parallel lines.
The alcoholic in my life is my big brother. He’s 26 now. I’m 23.
He has always struggled with ADD and anxiety, and I think these were major risk factors for him. He started smoking and drinking in high school, when he was about 16. To me, his drinking and smoking (cigarettes and pot) were never “just some high school experimentation”—it was always scary as hell to me. At 13, of course I didn’t understand what alcoholism was, but I think somehow I always knew he had a problem. I remember times when he would get drunk or high alone. I hated that all my brother wanted to do with me was get high, and it drove me crazy never knowing whether he was under the influence or not. Often, I was aware of things my parents weren’t, but I only told on him once. No kid wants to be a rat.
When I was in college and we were both home for the holidays, we’d go out and about and I’d find myself on an alcohol run with him. He was familiar with all the liquor stores around town. If I was driving, I’d tell him no. It was back in 2013 that I first acknowledged to myself that he was an alcoholic. My mom used that word, too, and we cried together.
A few times recently when we’ve been together, he’s drunk 6-9 beers a day. Usually, I lose count. When I come home, I often find empty beer and whiskey bottles stashed in random cabinets. I also know sometimes he stops drinking altogether. I don’t think it lasts more than a few weeks or months. He has said to our mom that sometimes, he “hates himself so much, he just wants to destroy himself." He acknowledges he has a problem and has told me that he “just likes getting drunk so much” and that once he starts drinking, he cannot stop. He gets angry easily whether he’s drunk or sober, but he’s never been violent or verbally abusive to anyone in my family when he’s drunk.
Over the summer, I came home one day and found him passed out on the kitchen floor with an empty bottle of whiskey. He thought I was our dog at first. When our mom came home and found the warm spot on the floor, he told her he’d taken a nap. She believed him. I didn’t figure it would do her any good to know. It destroyed me, though.
I don’t know what’s real anymore. When I think of him as an alcoholic, I feel like I’m being dramatic. When I don’t acknowledge his alcoholism, I feel like I’m ignoring reality. It’s all too dark to even imagine, let alone live in real life. I don’t really know how much he drinks or how long his sobriety lasts, because he lives in another state. He drives drunk. I don’t know how often. I know things could be a lot worse.
Sometimes, I think of my brother as having a terminal illness. I don’t know how to be with him or live my life while I wait for him to die. From what I’ve read, he could get sick and die tomorrow, or he could live to be 80 with no health problems.
He wants to go to college and study chemistry. He wants to get a dog. He wants to have kids someday. I don’t have faith he is stronger than his disease.
I have let go of some of my hope of having a happy relationship with my older brother, the kind where you visit and enjoy each other, communicate regularly, and help raise each other’s kids. I plan on protecting myself from him so as to suffer less, but I will never abandon him. I love him more than anyone in the world.
My parents acknowledge he is an alcoholic, and they try to avoid enabling him. We don’t talk about it much, though. I don’t think we’re exactly in denial. It’s just nobody knows what to do.
I suppose I mainly came here to share my story with people who get it. Some questions I have are:
-What about my story resonates with yours? What do you do?
-What can I expect of my brother’s life? Is there any hope?
-What do you wish you had known about alcoholism a long time ago? What do you understand about this disease?
Anything you’d like to share would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.
Member
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Wareham, Mass
Posts: 7,067
Hi, Silvia04. Welcome. I don't believe you are being dramatic. Sounds like your brother is struggling with a dependency on alcohol. As his sister, this is hard for you and your parents to cope with. I know other posters will be along, so I will simply say that there is a lot of good information, strength, experience and hope on this site. The only one who can change your brother is your brother. There are many programs that can help him, but he has to want to stop drinking. You can take care of yourself by learning about alcohol dependency, how it affects the drinker and his/her family, and ways that family members can learn to cope with the condition. Have you checked out Al-Anon yet?. It is a program for people who are troubled by another's drinking. It could be helpful. Peace.
Member
Join Date: Nov 2015
Location: East Coast
Posts: 1,235
Hi Silvia. I wanted to write something to you last night, but when I re-read my post it came out all mushy and you don't deserve mush at all.
The scariest thing about addiction is that you know what's around the corner and yet you don't. You know what will most likely happen if addiction continues its grip on your brother, but at the same time you're praying that the addiction will let your brother go. And you know that addiction leads to a downward spiral but as you said yourself, you don't know how long or how fast that spiral can take.
But your brother has to let the addiction go himself. That's a concept that I struggled with for years until I found this place.
My sister is a victim of sexual abuse and legitimately felt misunderstood by my parents. She turned to alcohol and now pot to mask the pain. She has made bad decision after bad decision despite the advice of many of her friends. Some of them couldn't bear to watch it and decided to distance themselves from her. She surrounds herself with people who are in no position to criticize her for her actions.
When I was younger, I thought that by continuing to shield my sister from the hurt she felt I was doing her a favor. I thought that when I endured her anger that I somewhat deserved it I wasn't sexually abused myself. I felt sorry for her. What was really happening: when I shielded her from the consequences of her bad decisions, I was reinforcing the idea in her head that she couldn't stand on her own two feet. Constant praise brought her to the point where she couldn't do anything unless she got immediate affirmation for it.
We're in a bit of a pickle now. My parents are getting older, and I cannot expect her to help out. She has teenage daughters, and that is hard, because it is so difficult not to be judgmental and angry about the way she's treating them. She is so hungry for love that it's a struggle for her to truly give love to them in a way that they deserve. Time and time again her emotional and financial priority is to herself and her boyfriend, who is chronic pot smoker himself.
99% of the time there's nothing you can do except hope. It's so hard, because you want to treat your sibling as if he/she was a rational adult and that is not a realistic expectation at all. At the same time, you have to hold out hope that one day he or she will meet that expectation, and the one way you act out that hope is to hold your sibling accountable for his/her actions.
I don't know if I actually managed to answer any of your questions. But I can say that being here on SR has helped me immensely. I wish you courage and grace no matter what.
The scariest thing about addiction is that you know what's around the corner and yet you don't. You know what will most likely happen if addiction continues its grip on your brother, but at the same time you're praying that the addiction will let your brother go. And you know that addiction leads to a downward spiral but as you said yourself, you don't know how long or how fast that spiral can take.
But your brother has to let the addiction go himself. That's a concept that I struggled with for years until I found this place.
My sister is a victim of sexual abuse and legitimately felt misunderstood by my parents. She turned to alcohol and now pot to mask the pain. She has made bad decision after bad decision despite the advice of many of her friends. Some of them couldn't bear to watch it and decided to distance themselves from her. She surrounds herself with people who are in no position to criticize her for her actions.
When I was younger, I thought that by continuing to shield my sister from the hurt she felt I was doing her a favor. I thought that when I endured her anger that I somewhat deserved it I wasn't sexually abused myself. I felt sorry for her. What was really happening: when I shielded her from the consequences of her bad decisions, I was reinforcing the idea in her head that she couldn't stand on her own two feet. Constant praise brought her to the point where she couldn't do anything unless she got immediate affirmation for it.
We're in a bit of a pickle now. My parents are getting older, and I cannot expect her to help out. She has teenage daughters, and that is hard, because it is so difficult not to be judgmental and angry about the way she's treating them. She is so hungry for love that it's a struggle for her to truly give love to them in a way that they deserve. Time and time again her emotional and financial priority is to herself and her boyfriend, who is chronic pot smoker himself.
99% of the time there's nothing you can do except hope. It's so hard, because you want to treat your sibling as if he/she was a rational adult and that is not a realistic expectation at all. At the same time, you have to hold out hope that one day he or she will meet that expectation, and the one way you act out that hope is to hold your sibling accountable for his/her actions.
I don't know if I actually managed to answer any of your questions. But I can say that being here on SR has helped me immensely. I wish you courage and grace no matter what.
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2016
Location: California
Posts: 2
Dear Maudcat and PuzzledHeart,
Thank you for your replies. I have heard of Al-Anon and have thought about checking it out. I see how it could help to share my story and hear others’ wisdom in real life. What you say about how my brother has to want to stop drinking is heartbreaking. How he can keep wanting to drink despite everything it costs him is something I can’t understand, never having been an addict myself.
PuzzledHeart, a lot of what you say rings true for me. Thanks for sharing your story about your sister. The not knowing is tough. I want answers from doctors and from my brother, but so much of alcohol dependency is clouded in secrecy and shame, not to mention the whole “all livers are not created equal” paradox. And I so want to treat my brother like a rational adult. I don’t know whether it’s harder to hold onto that hope or to let it go. I’m learning here that there seems to be a mindset one develops to deal with loved ones with addictions—how to love those people without enabling them and how to hold them accountable without judging them. My favorite thing that you say is that “the one way you act out that hope is to hold your sibling accountable for his/her actions.” I believe it would be positive for me to release my brother from the role of victim he plays in my mind (I am the hero, of course) and think of him as being solely responsible for his life. I read in another post something about giving a person the gift of responsibility for their actions. It’s a kind of dignity, I think. I’m not sure what it would look like for me to hold him accountable or whether I’m ready to stop making him the victim. It seems that if I’m trying to give him the gift of holding him accountable, I’m still trying to save him, in a way. An interesting thought.
Thank you for your replies. I have heard of Al-Anon and have thought about checking it out. I see how it could help to share my story and hear others’ wisdom in real life. What you say about how my brother has to want to stop drinking is heartbreaking. How he can keep wanting to drink despite everything it costs him is something I can’t understand, never having been an addict myself.
PuzzledHeart, a lot of what you say rings true for me. Thanks for sharing your story about your sister. The not knowing is tough. I want answers from doctors and from my brother, but so much of alcohol dependency is clouded in secrecy and shame, not to mention the whole “all livers are not created equal” paradox. And I so want to treat my brother like a rational adult. I don’t know whether it’s harder to hold onto that hope or to let it go. I’m learning here that there seems to be a mindset one develops to deal with loved ones with addictions—how to love those people without enabling them and how to hold them accountable without judging them. My favorite thing that you say is that “the one way you act out that hope is to hold your sibling accountable for his/her actions.” I believe it would be positive for me to release my brother from the role of victim he plays in my mind (I am the hero, of course) and think of him as being solely responsible for his life. I read in another post something about giving a person the gift of responsibility for their actions. It’s a kind of dignity, I think. I’m not sure what it would look like for me to hold him accountable or whether I’m ready to stop making him the victim. It seems that if I’m trying to give him the gift of holding him accountable, I’m still trying to save him, in a way. An interesting thought.
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