SoLongFarewell

I forgot to answer that dollydo and I was meaning too.

It's highly possible, my brother is an alcoholic (he has been since age 15 and he's 25 now). He used to really rebel against my parents (who put up with his behavior, so I guess that's another sign) many years ago.

I know he used to deal drugs, take them, go to the ER a couple of times because of them and that all seemed to stop within the last 5-4 years (but my mom does not believe he was ever on drugs to begin with?)

I think what I'm understanding is, my parents always helped him out no matter what. My brother is still an active alcoholic and two years ago he was put in jail for a couple of days for physically assaulting his girlfriend at the time, what did my parents do? They let him live with us (I was there too)! Where he continued to drink like a fish. Now his current girlfriend complained to me about his active drinking and how he verbally abuses her (sound familiar?)

I don't know much about Co-Dependency yet besides looking at a few signs and behaviors about it, which I seem to have, heck, I didn't even know co-dependency was an actual behavior until I came on here but I do thing I learned some (if not all) of this behavior from my parents and even possibly my brother, thinking that's just the way alcoholics/users will treat their spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends etc and we're supposed to help them no matter what.