Advice requested

March 18, 2006 10:43 AM

I talked to my parents this morning and my brother is in a psych-center on suicide watch after going thru $2,000 of my folk’s money on crack. This is not the first time this has happened:

He's stolen probably $30,000 from them in the past 10 years, has always been allowed to move back into their house, does not have a job and he suffers from dibilitating cluster headaches. He's 34 years old and really doesn't have much of a future at this point. He's been dating a married woman that abuses him for six or more years and is simply in a world of shit. My parents are in their later 60s and don't have much money. I live 700 miles away for them, offer limited financial assistance when I can, have let my brother live with me before so he can “come down” or at least find a place of some peace. He’s a funny, jovial, reasonable and smart guy that thru life’s circumstances has ended up with the worst deal. I love him. But now I’m at a loss. I talked to my parents this morning and just felt like I had nothing to say anymore and I feel like the current situation comes down to two responses: 1.) My parents kick him out of the house and we leave him to the elements. 2.) He moves down here with me and my girlfriend and we try to help him out. I’m just not sure I can ask my girlfriend this or myself. We’ve done it before and he goes back to the same patterns of drug abuse. Anyone out there got any ideas? Any insights? Experiences? I know this story is all too common but it’s hard.

posted by PHINC to human relations (17 comments total)

Maybe if your parents are willing to press charges against him for the theft, they can also petition the judge to sentence him to an in-treatment drug facility instead of jail. He needs to be in a program and your parents (and you) need to all be on the same page and not offer him places to crash land until he makes the committment to deal with his addiction. Unfortunately, no one can make him do this, past the judge possibly sentencing him to a facility for a limited amount of time. After that, the result will be up to him. Good luck with it.
posted by 45moore45 at 10:51 AM on March 18, 2006

Until he is willing to squarely face his addiction and go to rehab your brother needs to feel the consequences of his behavior sans family compassion. That being said, I have never been in your position, and I wouldn't want to have to make that kind of decision. There are plenty of addicts who would rather die in the street than face their problems.
posted by philmas at 10:58 AM on March 18, 2006

Your brother hasn't hit rock bottom because he hasn't been allowed to. I know how hard it can be to let someone descend but sometimes you've gotta bottom out before you can pick yourself up again.

Especially when bottoming-out can include overdosing or permanent injury.

But he'll keep using lifelines as long as they are offered so as to not have to face his life.
posted by fenriq at 11:08 AM on March 18, 2006

Woops, that didn't come out right. I meant to say that allowing someone to bottom out is hard to do when there are very real possibilities of permanent harm coming from the landing.
posted by fenriq at 11:09 AM on March 18, 2006

Until he is willing to squarely face his addiction and go to rehab your brother needs to feel the consequences of his behavior sans family compassion

Actually, family compassion is fine. Family help is not.

In any case, forcing him to live on his own and face consequences on his own is the worst possible solution -- except for all of the other solutions.

Whatever you do, do not take him in. That is a world of pointless hurt that you do not need.
posted by tkolar at 11:16 AM on March 18, 2006

I'm with 45moore45 - but it's possible to enroll your brother in an in-patient addiction treatment center without the law getting involved.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 11:16 AM on March 18, 2006

[moved more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 11:20 AM on March 18, 2006

My parents and my 28 year-old sister are in a very similar situation. Like your parents, they continually do everything they can to keep her off the drugs, on her meds, and out of jail/the psych ward. Their efforts have not changed her behavior at all, only allowed her to not face the consequences of her actions. Without their constant intervention, she would immediately revert to old patterns of behavior, which doesn't do her any good in the long run. I'm not sure my intervention would amount to much more. That is a hard thing for me to accept, but I know that if I let her move in with me and my fiancee, her chaos would win out over my order and I would lose. The truth is that any improvements she has made, she has made on her own because she had to to survive and that is it. I think my story is pretty standard. I hope you learn these same lessons with the least amount of pain for all involved.
posted by mrmojoflying at 11:22 AM on March 18, 2006

While y'all are at it have him screened for a mood disorder in case he is selfmedicating. A lot of addicts have em along with their addictions. But yes, unfortunately he has to hit bottom and want to help himself.

One of my good friends is a former crack addict who has been clean and sober for years*. He basically says you can't go easy on folks like this, and that doing favors for them isn't doing a favor for them after all.


*while there's life there's hope. My friend has a successful career, a wife and family now, and is doing very well. This after literally being in the gutter AND doing prison time. He gives God all the credit, FWIW.
posted by konolia at 11:31 AM on March 18, 2006

I have meta-advice - if you allow him to hit bottom, please take whatever steps are possible to mitigate the life-and-limb-risking parts of hitting bottom. Educating yourself about what it's like to be a homeless, at-risk addict in his locale would be the first step, and the second would be notifying the police and homelessness/mental health/social service agencies that he is out there, providing photographs, contact information and as much documentary information as possible to as many of these people as possible.
posted by By The Grace of God at 11:40 AM on March 18, 2006

My best friend is an ex-crackhead who stole, robbed, lied, and everything else to support his habit. He has since cleaned up and has a good job (better than mine, actually), but it took jailtime and estrangement from his family and friends to do it. It took him years of hard work and hard choices to put the pipe behind him, and he did it without support groups, rehab, or religion. (This may not be the best way, but it is what worked for him.)

He's 50 years old, just bought his first house, and recently celebrated a promotion at the same job he's held for seven years now. People can and do change, but they have to believe in themselves and really want it.

Don't cushion his fall, but don't let him lose all hope, either. It's a tough situatoin for everyone, and I don't have easy ansewrs. Don't give up on him, but let him know that he has to face the consequences of his decisions. I hope he gets better.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 12:36 PM on March 18, 2006

There are any number of treatment programs for cocaine addiction (which clearly has to be the first thing treated, if any of his problems are to be solved). You know what he needs: an inpatient detox program followed by a long-term treatment program. Make it happen.
posted by jellicle at 1:36 PM on March 18, 2006

My best friend and I were talking about some problems I'm having, and he said something that was so insightful that it bears repeating here.

"Don't let anyone cast you. When you're buying knives, would you go for some cheap crap or would you go for a Henckels knife? You'd chose the JA Henckels one every time, because it's forged instead of cast. Casting someone into who you want them to be makes them weak. People have to forge themselves. They have to beat themselves againt the anvil enough times to get the bubbles out, and be heated to get the impurities and toxins out. Otherwise you get something that's weak and inferior. Don't be weak and inferior."

I think the advice has already been posted: Press charges, show your brother in a way he can't ignore that he's hit bottom and fixing his life is not a result of circumstances and others' actions and is his responsibility to fix. If you keep trusting him when he's on drugs, he'll keep taking advantage of you. That's what drugs do to a person.
posted by SpecialK at 2:02 PM on March 18, 2006

your parents are enablers ... and i'm afraid that if you take your brother in, you may become an enabler, too

Maybe if your parents are willing to press charges against him for the theft, they can also petition the judge to sentence him to an in-treatment drug facility instead of jail.

this may be the best option ... he will probably hate them for it

down the road, he may well thank god they did this

while you are mulling that difficult decision over, there is NO reason why the people at the psych center shouldn't know the truth about his addiction ... they are not only an important resource for your brother, but for your parents and you ...

your parents need professional help to understand what their role has been in this situation and how harmful it as been to your brother and them
posted by pyramid termite at 2:44 PM on March 18, 2006

While y'all are at it have him screened for a mood disorder in case he is selfmedicating

It is also possible that he is self-medicating for the physical disorder he has. I know several chronic pain patients who are former addicts (having been drug- or alcohol-addicted as a way to deal with physical, rather than mental, pain, though painful and "invisible" disorders, including the cluster headaches PHINC's brother suffers from, can start seeming like mental pain--many people simply see such people as hypochondriacs), but any mood disorders or depression they had were results of the chronic pain and/or the drugs.

Unfortunately, a history of self-destructive self-medication makes it very difficult for one to obtain needed pain medication for the rest of one's life, so an aware addict in such a state may allow himself to self-destruct on the grounds that living with untreated chronic pain would be a fate worse than death (to someone in pain and in the impaired mental state pain and excessive drug use both bring about).

That aside, I'll echo everyone else: he needs professional help in an inpatient setting, whether through pressing charges or committing him more directly.
posted by Cricket at 8:45 PM on March 18, 2006

I used to get cluster headaches and they are so SO painful I can't even explain it. I had them every day for a year and then for shorter period of time after that would get them for 3 days to a week. A cluster headache makes a migraine look like a joke, I've downed up to 4 vicodens at a time when I knew one was coming and it maybe took the edge off a bit for about 10 minutes. They also come with a pre-headache shadow period of frantic activity and impaired judgement and a post headache haze that lasts at least a day and often into the next headache. When I was getting them regularly I would also get periods of intense anger, anxiety, exhaustion etc.

As it turns out there are some effective treatments, mainly injectable Imitrex, oxygen and body work. In my case long term chiropractic essentially cured me as mine seemed to be related to a neck injury/ concussion from my childhood (I get attacks every once in a while if I jar my neck or get pressure on my temples from a helmet or tight hairstyle). Not knowing about any of those treatments probably makes crack seem like a really good option. They really are miserable and as they return every day you never really recover from them during an attack.

This website is an excellent resource. Find a good doctor and give it a whirl. It might not help the addiction issues but at least he won't be so miserably in pain when trying to deal with temptation.
posted by fshgrl at 11:00 PM on March 18, 2006

He's picked the wrong drug, for a start.
posted by flabdablet at 11:49 PM on March 18, 2006