Manipulative alcoholic
I've never posted on a forum before, but here goes...
My brother is 21 years old, and has struggled with alcoholism for 3 years now. Ever since he started drinking heavily his personality has completely changed, it’s like he's becoming more and more manipulative every day. He's not only mentally abusive but sometimes physically as well.
It’s gotten to the point where my mum (who suffers from depression and a personality disorder) has been constantly crying and feeling really ill. My brother constantly tries to guilt trip her into thinking it's all her fault he drinks (He’s never taken the blame for ANYTHING). My mum is the main target of his manipulation, and I think this is because mentally she's more vulnerable because of her mental health problems. He will say to her ‘It’s your fault I drink so it’s your responsibility to buy my beer’ or ‘If you don’t buy me beer I’ll kill myself and it’ll be your fault’. Everyone can see that he’s manipulative other than my mum.
Recently he’s gotten so much worse. A few months ago he was trying to wake my mum up in the middle of the night for money, so he could go to our local 24 hour ASDA. I heard the commotion and went to see what was going on, and saw him hitting her to try and wake her up (she’s hardly been sleeping, so she wasn’t waking up easily). I shouted at him to stop it, to which he told me to go away and started hitting her again. At which point I pulled him away from her, and he turned his anger on me. He was getting in my face saying he was going to hit me, whilst I was trying to calm him down. The next thing I know I’d been punched in the face (hard), he looked like he was going to do it again until my fiancé (who had been woken up by the noise) ran into the room and put a stop to it. The next day when my mum talked to him about it he laughed, said I deserved it and he hoped he’d broke my face. I had every intention of reporting it to the police, but when I mentioned it to my mum she begged me not to. He has her wrapped around his little finger and it’s so frustrating what he’s doing to her. After this incident it calmed down for a little while, until recently (about a week ago) when I was defending my mum because he was trying to manipulate my mum again. I ended up having an argument with him about how he treats people and he came towards me like he was going to hit me again, but my mum held him back until he calmed down. Since then he has threatened to kill me numerous times, saying that I’ve driven him to it. I was that scared by it that I started blocking my bedroom door off at night and have been getting panic attacks. I really want to move out with my fiancé but I’m so scared of leaving my mum alone with him, she nearly 60 and isn’t getting any younger. My mum has tried everything to help him but he doesn’t want to help himself. She hardly has enough money to feed herself (or replace the doors he’s punched through because he couldn’t get his own way) because he’s drained her of all her money to feed his alcoholism. I just don’t know what to do.
He just doesn’t seem like my little brother anymore, and I feel I’ve lost him. Can alcoholism make a person behave like this?
Thanks for taking the time to read.