There is no denying living with an incurable disease is difficult, frustrating, and heartbreaking. Yet, living with a disease so terribly misunderstood by society, one with legalities and criminal outlets, can often be harder than living with a socially acceptable disease.
Growing up, I didn’t know much about addiction and I honestly didn’t really care to learn about it. To me, addiction was simply an excuse for the weak druggies who merely wanted a justification for their poor decisions. Growing up, I was forced to learn the truths, myths, and just about everything about addiction. It’s safe to say, along the way, I became addicted to addiction.
“Addiction is a chronic, often relapsing brain disease that causes compulsive drug seeking and use, despite harmful consequences to the addicted individual and to those around him or her."
Living with an addict, loving an addict, is by far the hardest part of my everyday life.
I lived in the same dysfunctional household with my brother, *Jason, until I went to college in Buffalo, more than three hundred miles away, yet not far enough to escape the daily life of addiction.
There is always a constant worry, a constant reminder, that a phone call is all it would take to ruin me.
Jason is one of the most loving, kindhearted people I have ever met in my life. He is funny as anything, more sensitive than every woman in my family, and truly talented in athletics, writing, and just about anything he wanted to excel in. You are instantly drawn to him when you first meet him; he has so much to offer, and so many characteristics I wish I had.
But, underneath it all, it isn’t his intelligence or athleticism that fuels his journey—it’s heroin.
I’m not ashamed of my brother. I never have been. I never will be.
I am ashamed of myself.
I was quick to judge him, and his, what I thought to be at the time a, bullsh*t excuse to being a scumbag. But what people don’t know are the countless moments in the past eleven years where I was proven how false my preconceptions were.
In these eleven years, I have learned a lot about addiction and how it affects everyone involved, not just the addict.
It controls you in every way.
Not being in control of your mood and your emotions is a difficult thing to cope with and adjust to. One phone call can, and often does, ruin a perfect day. His actions directly affect me, and the people around me as well. His addiction controls me, just as it does him. In just one moment your entire world can be shaken up, devastatingly enough to provoke anxiety attacks, bailing on responsibilities, or even completely shutting down emotionally. Addiction controls you in unfathomable ways; it is not until you're forced into it, do you start to understand.
I’ll never forget it. I was friends with my brother’s rehab roommate, *Mike. One day I received a message from Mike, asking how my brother was doing, utterly confusing me, as they were roommates and I was more than 300 miles away from home. Turns out, my brother overdosed on heroin, and I was the first one in my family to receive the news.
Making that phone call to my mother, hearing her sobs, her pure devastation, is something I would never want anyone to have to do, something my parents do for me far too often.
It controls my every emotion until I know he’s OK.
But deep down, I know he will never be OK.
There is no end.
There have been so many overdoses, jail sentences, rehabs, and NA meetings. Eleven years have come and gone, and I’m still living every day as I was 11 years ago. Addiction is a life sentence, an incurable disease, making prisoners out of not only the addicted but also the families and loved ones. It’s a never ending cycle, something proven to me too often, one that takes a piece of you with it every time you’re reminded.
As of about a week ago, my brother was clean for about 18 months. Had a good job, beautiful girlfriend, and a family who supported him every step of the way. Still, he overdosed again, only days before getting Vivitrol, a drug used to help addicts fight their cravings. He couldn’t wait. He overdosed. T
his was not the first time he relapsed, nor the first time he’s overdosed, nor is it the first time he has been found unconscious. With every good week, month, or year that passes, there is a false hope that builds up in all of us, the false possibility of Jason’s addiction not being in control anymore. But with all that false hope, comes unfailing disappointment. There is no escape to living in the life controlled by an addict.
You’re helpless (to an extent).
There is no love or bond between people stronger than the relationship between an addict and drugs. Addicts are manipulative, sly, and too stubborn for their own good. There is not much anyone can do to help an addict besides the addict themselves, leaving loved ones feeling helpless and unsure of what to do or how to help.
If the love and support my brother received was not enough to get him to ask for help, confide in someone, or say something about what he was going through, nothing would have been enough. There is no amount of begging, tears, or love, immense enough to silence the cravings once they surface. Jason, like most addicts, does not have the capability to put reality in the foreground, to rationally think of consequences before impulsively acting on them. From the moment an addict seeks a fix, there is no logical thinking, no rationale able to break that trance.
Drug addicts do not notice there are steps before using-- such as, craving; seeking; buying; preparing needles, bowls, etc.; and using. For addicts there is just simply using. The steps along the way get lost in their frenzied minds, making it nearly impossible to stop once they seek their poison of choice. It’s difficult to help the helpless, especially when they don’t want or think they need it—making us helpless, too.
You grieve. You worry. You hurt. Everyday.
When you live with addiction surrounding your life, you grieve with every drug-related death. Every time your addict has a hard day, in the back of your head you are constantly worrying if it was hard enough to push them to use. Every relapse you grieve as if that could have been the last chance they had to say no, to save themselves. You feel emotions you didn’t know existed, anger mixed with heartache, always including confusion. You hurt inside and out, physically and mentally, consciously and unconsciously. To me, one of the worst feelings is waking up from a nightmare so realistic, your entire day or week is haunted by it. I have had countless nightmares about my brother and his disease that have crippled me in ways I can’t explain. Addiction is always on my mind.
A friend of mine from high school recently passed away after losing his fight with addiction. It really hit me hard. I woke up to a text, “Matt* died last night.” My heart sank into my stomach, knowing any day I can be getting that message about my own brother. A message I'm surprised I haven’t gotten yet, a message I should have gotten numerous times.
All the 'Why?'questions, just lead to more.
Why can’t he just stop? Why doesn’t he realize the second he is asking for drugs, buying the drugs, preparing the drugs, just to simply not do the drug? Why is he risking everything he has for one high? Why doesn’t he ever ask for help before it’s too late? Why is he killing himself? Why did we let it get so bad? Why is he doing this to my family? Why is he doing this to himself? Why doesn’t he realize he is better than this? Why can’t he realize he is more than his addiction? Why hasn’t he learned anything in the past eleven years? Why can’t I say or do anything to help him? Why can’t I understand? Why can’t it just stop?
Most of these questions don’t have definitive answers, the few that do, just create more questions. I have probably asked myself thousands of questions in the past eleven years, and no amount of knowledge, studying, research gives me the answers I’m looking for. Because I am not looking for answers necessarily, I am looking for a solution—one I now know I will never find.
Sometimes, you have to choose.
There comes a point where the non-addicts living with addiction need to make very crucial and difficult choices. There comes a point where the worry, the disappointment, and the lifestyle all become too much to handle. Having an addict as a family member is difficult and involuntary, but it is voluntary to other people that enter your life. Not everyone is cut out to watch one person, and one person’s actions, completely devastate an entire family. Those people have no loyalties, no reason to diminish their happiness as a sacrifice to an addict. Often times, people entering the life of addiction, are just as uneducated and judgmental as I was, and as many people still are.
When addicts are unable to get in control of their own lives, there comes a point where we need to stop letting them control ours. A time when we need to remove ourselves, think for ourselves, and control our own happiness. This choice is one of the most difficult things a loved one of an addict will ever need to do, but it is imperative to leading a healthy and fulfilled life.
After so many years of choosing him, after so many cyclic and repetitive events, after watching my family crumble, the time has come where I need to take a step back and let him go.
Sometimes the people you love so much, unfortunately, love something else more. Sometimes those people do more harm to your life than good. Sometimes your love is not enough. Sometimes you need to let them go. If I learned anything in these 11 years, it’s this:
There comes a time in an addict’s life where they expend all the support and love around them. Where their selfish acts train those affected to be selfish too. To put their happiness and life above that of an addict. Addicts are selfish-- there is no denying that. But from now on I am going to be too.
I have learned there is nothing wrong with being selfish when it benefits you, grows you, and challenges you. There is nothing wrong with taking control of your happiness by removing a burden consistently tainting it. There is nothing wrong with choosing yourself if it means taking control of your life.
There is nothing wrong with moving on.
I’ve always been selfless, putting others first—but not this time.
I love my brother but I love myself more.
*names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individual.
