Thank you all so much for your responses, for making me feel okay with my decisions and for making me feel welcome here. I don't know why I didn't look for this forum sooner. Years ago, when dealing with infertility, I found a forum that I loved and made all the difference in the world. I guess because there is so much secretiveness and shame about alcoholism that it didn't occur to me that a place like this existed on the web.
I have not tried Al-Anon, but have considered it. My parents went a few years back but did not find it helpful. My parents are simple people, and I do not mean that in any kind of derogatory way. But I think they felt like there was too much psycho babble at the meeting that just went over their head. But, perhaps I will give a meeting a try in the next few weeks. And I love that I have this forum to come to as well. I suspect I am going to need plenty of encouragement to stay strong in my resolve to quit letting my brother's illness affect my life.
It was so easy to ignore his illness when I lived several states away and only heard about his incidents every few months. Then we moved back to raise our children near family and suddenly his problem was in my face everyday. It made me so sad to see him hurting, but I think what made/makes me even sadder is to see him emotionally, and financially hurting my parents. He is also compromising their health, or at least I believe he is as they have health problems that stress certainly doesn't do any favors for. From the time we moved back, my husband has wanted to be very vocal to my brother and my parents about him taking responsibility and owning up to his problems. But, I continually asked my husband to stay quiet. To just let my parents do what they thought they needed to do for him, to get him his degree and get him out of the house and into a nice job. Ha, if that didn't backfire on me when he ended up out of their house for only a few months. I keep wondering if I had said something sooner, or allowed my husband to say something, would things be different now? Would we all be happier? Would I be over feeling like I am the bad child because I asked my parents to choose between allowing my brother to live in their home and taking care of my children in their home? I know, hindsight is 20/20, right?
Oh, about the "painfully normal" diagnosis. My thought is that my brother went in, failed to tell the doctor that he has a history of a drinking problem and instead just told him that he lost his job and chose to get smashed. Well, yeah, being upset about losing a job would be "painfully normal". My brother is the king of being evasive and leaving out important details, such that he spins a situation to be much different/better than it really is.
Thanks again for being here!!
~JSOI