I am living abroad and my brother is drug addicted and psychotic. He’s violent and he’s in his mid twenties living with my parents back home.
Family is in constant fear but they refuse to kick him out. I think he’s a lost cause. What can I do to help my parents? I don’t think my brother is saveable at this point. His addiction and craziness is getting worse.
They’ve called the cops many times due to fights and arguments. My parents are old they can’t take this anymore I want to help but I’m living so far away and haven’t lived with them in a long time since high school. I haven’t been a good son or brother.
What can I do to savage this situation?
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comments
It seems cruel to abandon an addict in your life, but it really is the only option. Hitting rock bottom is the necessary wake up call.
Even then, there are many people who won't see it as a wake up call. But if hitting rock bottom doesn't motivate your family member to make changes, then there was nothing you could ever do to help them.
What is the health care situation like in your home country? Can your brother get help that won't bankrupt him or your parents?
Ultimately, your parents need to distance themselves from your brother until he seeks help. If they keep supporting him and giving him money, he will have no motivation to make changes in his life.
It's not easy to see a family member suffer with addiction. But the more you enable them, the less you're helping them.
Seems that you understand quite well that you, nor your parents can help him if he doesn't want to help himself. That's 100% accurate. You need to either convince your parents of this or connect them with people who can. They need to realize what everyone will tell them, which is to stop enabling.
I was in a similar situation and can tell that everyone in my family including myself, we had different health issues because we couldn't stop worrying and also couldn't do anything to help. Any talking was useless.
Lots of cops showing up in the middle of night asking for her location, random burglaries of my parents house when I was a kid getting my stuff stolen, the screaming, fighting, crying, it was hell.
If it's really that severe, like physical dependence to an opioid for instance, and has been going on for years with no hope with rehab etc, then allowing him to stay might be just enabling. In my sister's case, it had gone too far, and speaking with multiple other families dealing with this, as well as multiple ex-addicts, there seems to be a common train of thought. They need to hit rock bottom and want to help themselves. It's a difficult decision, but we had to distance to not enable her (my parents are still understandably not the best at this). I haven't spoken to her once in over 10 years at least.
She seems to be showing signs every now and then of attempts to getting better, but falls back into old habits and hasn't really broken out yet.
It's really just a bad situation for all parties involved. Talk to professionals if you haven't already. Don't just take my advice, I'm just speaking from experience. Talk to real professionals.
Sorry. Hope you all get through this ok.
I would try to make sure he's not affecting your parents' life to as much extent as it's only possible in this case.
If you haven't tried medical help don't give up on him just yet.