Angela,
I am so sorry. My family has a history of major depression and I have read much about it. It is a mental illness, it is often genetic, and it is intensified by the use of alcohol and certain narcotics. The brain is wounded by disease, just as other organs of the body can wounded by disease.
Because it is a brain illness, there is nothing you could have done to cure your brother, and there is nothing you ever did or said which influenced his illness of depression and his addiction. When the brain is biologically affected, words and love simply cannot change that. Only professional treatment and the right medications can bring about healing.
Your pain over his death is very intense, some moments almost unbearable, I'm sure. The survivors of a loved one's suicide suffer such pain and guilt, and they feel so helpless because they cannot do anything to change what has happened. They hurt to the bone. They feel angry. They sometimes want to die themselves. And some of them take drugs to escape their emotional pain.
With the gene of addiction in your family history, you are at risk yourself of becoming addicted to alcohol and drugs. You are at high risk. So it is important you avoid all narcotics--anything you can get hooked on, including alcohol--because you are biologically very vulnerable. And addiction happens to people when they do not know it is happening. So anyone with a family history of addiction needs to avoid the use of narcotics as much as possible. Your life is important, you have a destiny to fulfill, you have been born with beautiful qualities which need to blossom and make a difference in this world. So protect your health, avoid pills and alcohol, so you can be well and grow.
Your brother died of an organic, biological illness. Many people who drink and who suffer depression take their own lives. In the news recently, Mary Kennedy was a victim of her combined alcoholism and depression and took her own life. She had young, beautiful children and wealth and dear friends and family, and yet, her brain was wounded and her thinking became so fogged that for her, suicide seemed the only solution, what she wanted. Your brother had the same brain wounding. The same mental disease.
Since depression is a possible genetic illness in your family, and because of your trip to the hospital, you would do best by seeing a good family doctor who can prescribe for you non-narcotic anti-depressant medication, something which has been around for a long time and has a proven record of safety, like Lexapro, Prozac, etc. The doctor will determine whether you can be helped by this kind of medicine and if so, then you would start out with very low doses and see how the medication works for you. My son suffered major depression in his senior year of college and he had a kind of breakdown--much crying spontaneously, loss of hope, withdrawal--and he went to a good doctor who knew what he was suffering and he got medicines and he got better. He stayed on this medicine and still takes it today. He is happy, he has a happy relationship, he is back in school, he looks good. The professional treatment saved him.
Angela, you deserve that kind of outcome, too. Please care for your life and your soul, because you are worthy of all the beauty this world has to offer.