Introduction?
I didn't really know where to put this, since the main problem at the moment seems to be alcohol, but there have been other substances in the past so I thought this was the correct location.
I am the sister of an abuser, and I, and my mother, have pretty much resigned to the fact the he is going to die, and not long from now. I just don't know where to turn anymore, what to say... I feel hopeless. Here is my brothers story. Let me first apologize for how long this might be....
My brother got into a horrible car accident about 15 years ago. He broke his back, ribs, collapsed lung, and hit his head pretty hard where he didn't even know who he was for a couple of weeks. The hospital that received him did not look to see his back was broken and moved him.... needless to say, he won a pretty hefty lawsuit against the hospital, and the trucking company that hit him. He somewhat recovered from his injuries, but his back remained broken, bad. He ended up having another surgery about a year ago to fix some things... don't know how much that worked, he says it did, but then, says its worse to "need" the pain meds still. But I digress....
Right after the accident, I noticed a change in him, behaviorally. He wasn't the same person that I grew up with. He had reverted to almost child like. He also started this weird obsession with sex. His girlfriend of 8 years left him within that first year because of dirty magazine and strippers being called over. He was also getting worse on the pain meds.
Fast forward another year or two.... he met another woman. This woman knew he had money from the settlement, and pretty much was out to use him from the get go. She was a single mom of two who saw an opportunity. I won't go in to all those details as that is probably a whole other forum.... During this relationship, the pain meds grew... and grew. He was taking almost a whole bottle a day... vicodin, Soma... whatever he could get. He would even drive down to Mexico for pills. When he couldn't get his hands on the pills, it turned to cocaine. This pattern continued for years. He has a couple of kids during this time.
Fast forward again a few more years. Money ran out (cocaine is expensive, as was the wife) and Meth began. Alcohol, Meth and the pain meds. This went on for awhile. Eventually, with the tap out, the wife left, took the kids, found a new source for funding, and cut my brother off from the kids all together. Divorce got finalized. My brother had visitation, and would never do any of the drugs with the kids around. It seemed to be the one thing that would actually keep him sober.
He had his back surgery about 2 years ago now, as per the first paragraph. While there, they had him on Morphine (and another one equally as heavy) and he had these awful hallucinations. He had told us that a woman was brought in and raped by the Doctors with a 10 ft. dildo... that there were nurses giving him a sponge bath and all the while taking video of it to post on the internet. There is more but you get my drift I'm sure. He believed it so much, even after coming off the drugs that he had hired a lawyer to sue the hospital for what happened. Of course, the lawyer couldn't help him.
He has been arrested, a few times. Has spent a couple of months in jail. He hears voices telling him to do things, usually during detox. He only has access to alcohol now, so thats all he does, but the DTs still include these voices no matter the substance at this point. He broke in to an apartment above him because a woman was calling him up there for sex. He was told by these voices that his kids were getting raped, that he needs to slice his wrists, hide in his car, kick the window out of his car etc etc. He gives in to these voices some of the time. The last time he was in the hospital was because of the wrist slicing.
And... here we are today. He is drunk, drinking continually. Calling me all the time talking about how hot he is, how he wants to have sex with this person or that... I won't get into the details that he does, but let's just say it's pretty nasty. I hang up on him most of the time, and when I see his number on the caller ID, I usually ignore it.
Oh.. the biggest point... He is non-functional. No job. No community service. Refuses to go to any AA meetings... says the last time he went, some guy there sold him drugs. Whatever. But here is the kicker... about 5 years ago, he met this woman on the internet. She pays for EVERYTHING for him, in exchange for NOTHING. He doesn't have sex with her, in fact, treats her like absolute crap, calling her ugly etc. She has her own life and is very successful at her job. But in the meantime, she pays his rent, buys him anything he asks (or throws a tantrum) for, like a car, LCD TV, designer clothes and sunglasses etc. and gives him money for his restitution and community service (which of course does not end up being used for that.) We have talked to her, yelled at her... but she just won't stop.
I don't know what else to do anymore. I am losing my only brother, and I know I am helpless. I really don't want him to die, but I see it coming. He won't get help, he won't listen to anyone, my mother's heart is completely broken. We know many recovering alcoholics and substance abusers who have tried talking to him, but they say he doesn't listen, that the trigger words don't work, that he doesn't have any, for lack of better words, common sense or humanity, like regular people do (which he lost mentally in the accident before the substance problems, compounded I'm sure with the drugs and alcohol.)
Here is the only question I have at this point. How do you get help for someone that has a mental disability going in to the abuse problem? Is there anything at all we can do? He is an adult, regardless of his mental problems, and the programs he found himself in (after hospital detox visits) won't listen to family members because he is an adult after all. He also has no money, no medicare, no disability, no anything. where can we as a family turn, or is it not even possible? I just feel so very hopeless and sad. Thanks for listening (reading) my first, long-winded post.