Let us take a moment and talk about something called Addiction. My little brother is an addict. I can only use that word, because it isn’t one thing he’s addicted to, but pretty much anything and everything that can give someone that “feel good” high. He’s addicted to being high, not even necessarily the substances to make one high, but the feeling itself. He’s been drinking since he was 12 or 13. My mom’s boyfriend at the time allowed him to drink when nobody was around. He started smoking around then too. He got hooked on pot and then to the Adderall that he was put on to help with his ADD.
Let’s fast forward a few years. At 15 we put him in rehab because he was stealing my mom’s pills, drinking at friend’s houses, huffing, smoking pot, and pretty much doing everything in his power to be high at all times. When he got out, he had been clean for 6 months. One day, he got out of the shower, picked up my mom’s aerosol deodorant spray and a towel and began to huff again because it seemed like the thing to do. It put him in the wonderful spiral he continued until he almost killed himself.
He ended up in a rehab in Jackson, Michigan for a short while after this. He was 18.
A few years ago, after he got out, my brother’s girlfriend started living with him and my mom because her parents kicked her out. And not long after, I began living with my mom because my boyfriend dumped me and I had nowhere else to go.
My brother and his girlfriend drank every night and they reminded me of every single episode of Cops I’ve ever seen. Until she got pregnant. He went easy on the drinking and getting high for a while, but after my nephew was born, it started all over again. He was also addicted to porn at that time. And stealing.
His girlfriend ended up leaving him and he got worse. We’d had to kick him out because he was huffing aerosol keyboard cleaner spray and I thought he’d died. I sill have nightmares about it. He went to live with his half-sister who got him hooked on coke and they went on a crime spree that included the both of them breaking into our grandparent’s summer home and stealing anything and everything they would fit into the car. She eventually kicked him out because even SHE couldn’t trust him to not burn her place to the ground while everyone slept. He eventually came to live with us again.
One night, in late December of 2010, I came home to find nobody home and the door open. I didn’t think much of it until around 1 or 2 in the morning my mom and I were woken up by a pounding on the door. We thought it was him at first. My mom opened the door and it was a police officer. He showed my mom a picture on his camera and asked if we knew who it was. It showed a young man lying in a snow bank covered in his own bloody vomit. It was my brother. They’d taken him to the hospital and we needed to get there as soon as possible.
They’d found him lying in the snow, his pants around his ankles from where he’s stopped to take a piss, and an empty bottle of rubbing alcohol lying next to him.
He’d been drinking my mouth wash, I knew that because I had to start taking it with me to work. But we didn’t know he’d started drinking rubbing alcohol as well.
When were allowed to see him in the hospital, he was lying unconscious in the ER wrapped in a heating blanket called a Bear Hugger and was getting warm fluids intravenously. His skin was so cold, but the nurse said that the only thing that saved him was the snow because otherwise he would have died. The cold slowed his body down and basically preserved him. When they did his blood work, they said his blood contained so much Isopropyl that it looked as though he’d been drinking paint thinner or nail polish remover. His levels were at over 200% and if they didn’t start doing dialysis soon, his liver and kidneys would start to shut down. That was after they’d moved him into residence.
When were finally allowed to see him, he was still unconscious and had vomited 2 or 3 more times, mostly blood and part of dinner I’d made for him. He’s aspirated some of his vomit and they were afraid he would develop pneumonia from it.
This is what we saw when we were allowed to visit him.
The doctor encouraged us to take pictures so he would know what we’d had to see.
Eventually, he woke up and told the nurses what he’d been drinking.
Rubbing alcohol, witch hazel, hand sanitizer, cough syrup and mouth wash. They’d had to remove the purell pump that was in his room so he wouldn’t drink it.
We got him into Dawn Farms, a wonderful long term program in Ann Arbor. They’d had him for 3 or 4 months before he was released because he was intimidating to other patients. But he was clean. He’d gone back to sign some paperwork and stole a girl’s purse on his way out.
In the Summer of 2011, he was picked up by the police after I’d called them in secret after he came home high after a robbing spree, but I hadn’t known he’d been seen by someone who’s house he’d broken in to, so they were already on their way.
He’s now in prison in Marquette, Michigan serving 3 to 15 years. My brother is an addict. When he’s clean he’s probably one of the nicest guys almost anyone knows. He’s funny and outgoing and charming. But he has Mr. Hyde waiting inside of him, just below the surface. He’s scary man when he’s drinking. And scarier on everything else. I love him and hope for the best for him, but he has a lot of time left to think. He’s told my mom that he knows he’d be dead or wishing he was dead if he wasn’t in prison right now. I honestly think I could have burying my brother soon after the last incidents if he hadn’t been put in prison. I could be writing this as a remembrance of the troubled young man my brother had become in his terrible self-destructive life. The fact that I’m not makes me glad, but it just means that he has a longer way to go. I hope this has a happy ending for him. I hope he stays on the right road and the path to constant recovery.
Addiction is an ugly, destructive thing. It destroys not only the life of the addict themselves, but their family and friends. I guess I hope this finds someone who’s in need of a learning tool for someone who has a brother like mine. Someone early enough to be saved from taking a long, hard drop to the very, scraping bottom.
