Coping with my Brother's addiction

Anyone who has had to cope with the unpredictability of living with someone addicted to any kind of drug knows how hard it can be on those around that person. Since I was about 12 (I'm now 18) I have known my brother has been deeply involved in drugs. In the last year it hit us and him harder than it ever had before. It began with extreme cocaine binges that culminated in two suicide attempts. What is still hardest to accept even now, is at the time I felt no shock or horror to hear my brother had attempted to drown himself after a drug binge. It seemed like something that was expected and I felt a sigh of what really was my own selfishness. I thought, why did he have to do this to me? I have exams to worry about. It never occurred to me the mindset of someone with addiction or mental illness might not think of those around them. Since then he has moved home with my parents and me and he grew increasingly erratic and violent, often kicking or hitting me. I no longer considered him family and I had decided to emotionally cut all ties with my own brother. Some of you may say this is cold- hearted to give up on a family member. And in some respects I won't disagree with you. It is selfish, but looking back I knew he had never been what a brother should be, he chose drugs over others and I chose my self respect over helping through his self- induced battle with drugs. Not long after this his best and closest friend, the only person who understood him committed suicide after battling with his own personal drug addiction. My brother immediately became dependant on cannabis to get him through the day. He blocked out the hurt of his loss with a smoky haze. With the death of his friend, I felt a personal loss of innocence. I was turning into an adult and suddenly death was not something we only dealt with in old age, it was people destroying themselves out of a choice and generally with drug abuse at my age. In the months following this I knew 3 people aged 15-20 who killed themselves due to an addiction they feel they could not solve. Eventually, my brother sought counselling and was admitted for a while to try and undo the effects that drugs had on his mental health, which at the time looked soon to be drug induced schizophrenia. At this same time i was struggling to cope with my uneasy and tabooed family situation. I turned from a bubbly happy teenage girl to an introverted, quiet, emotional, irratic and shy person. I could no longer join into the jokes with my friends because whatever they were talking about seemed childish and insignificant. I contemplated suicide alot and being on my own became unbearable. Although I was smart enough to cut it out early, for a while I used the then legal high, Mephedrone as an escape and began to push away my best friends and boyfriend for people who really didn't care about me. Sense would tell you that after seeing it first hand it would be your natural instinct to avoid drugs. But I didn't want to deal with my problems I just wanted to get away from them and I saw the way I did drugs to be different to the way he did them. But of course it wasn't any different, any time I woke up after taking drugs the night before I felt the same depression he felt and subconsciously this probably made me more angry because I blamed my depression on him. However, I was lucky enough to make a clear decision to attend counselling sessions once a week and an even better decision to say I will not only never take drugs again but I will no longer play into those people I was around who said they were cool or harmless. I stated clearly and abruptly that I disagreed and indicated the true harm they placed on youth. Although most people chose to ignore me, some realised later for themselves when several drug users I knew became involved in dealing and were targeted by bigger dealers and several people I once considered friends were injured. What I learned most importantly from counselling is to make decisions that suit me. Many times I hung around crowds who were bad for me for the sake of my boyfriend. I made the decision that if he loved me he would stop taking drugs and understand why I no longer wanted to be around people who got me down. Luckily for me, he did love me enough to make that sacrifice and he supported me and never touched mephedrone again. Today I'm so much happier because of the services of Life Line Counselling and I'm learning everyday how to grow up in my own time and deal with problems at home. My brother is no longer violent and has made a huge improvement by attempting to quit all drugs. We still live in the same house and still don't speak to each other. On the positive side, without this struggle, my Art and poetry would never have flourished as it has and I wouldn't be reading English with Creative writing in September at university.