New Here
Hi everyone - I spent a lot of time reading lately, but this is my first post in Friends & Family. The active alcoholic in my life is my brother.
I have been in recovery for almost 19 months and I was a very "high bottom" alcoholic. I don't think that makes me better or worse than anyone, but I simply can't understand the things my brother is doing, even though I drank more than I should have for many years. I know it sounds petty, and I really don't mean it to sound like a comparison between us.
I don't even really know what my question is, or if I have one, I just needed to tell some folks who understand how difficult I am finding it to have my brother in my life.
I am raising his daughter, and his son is now living with his soon to be ex-wife's parents. I am at wit's end with my parents enabling my brother's drinking, with the chaos it causes in our family....my brother does something stupid like drive drunk, etc. and the phone calls start flying back and forth between my parents, my other siblings, etc. My parents call constantly to check that my neice is safe here - for heaven's sake, we have legal custody of her and my husband is a recently retired police officer! She's safe! We live in a 150 year old house, so there is no insulation, nowhere where I can go to have a private phone conversation, so all the kids hear everything I say. I don't think my neice needs to know that my parents are so worried for her safety. My own three children dont' need to hear it all either. They are all under 12 years old!
I know I should not take the calls all the time, but I am having a hard time stopping myself. I feel crazy - I want the chaos to stop, at least in our home, where my DH and I can have some control over it, but I have such a hard time not picking up the phone.
On top of everything else, we are coping with a death in the family on my husband's side, and my brother picks now to start up with "drunk in public" behavior again. I have no patience left for any of it.
I tried Al-anon and I liked it, but I can not make meetings right now because of time/distance constraints, but I hope to go back as soon as I can. In the meantime, thank you for listening.
Jomey