Last week my brother Chris would have celebrated his 58th birthday. As I reflected on the birthday that never was, so many memories flooded my mind and drowned my heart. As always, I felt a familiar tug of guilt: Could I have done more? Did any of my actions no matter how unintentional, add to his problems? Could my non-action have caused him more despair? Should I have reported warning signs I saw and now recognize, even when he was a child? Just as the love for my brother never goes away, neither does the guilt. My brother Chris lost his life entirely too young because of substance abuse. The saddest part or one of the saddest parts is that he did manage to clean up his life, get off heroine and try to get healthy in those last tortured years of his life, but unfortunately, it was too late. The damage done to his body by years of abuse had destroyed any chance he had to live a healthy and long life. Substance abuse….it is the most ruthless of killers.
When I was growing up, we referred to it as drug addiction. I would have said “My brother is a drug addict” and the connotations of a wasted shell of a human being, sprawled in a dirty hallway with a needle in his arm would have been conjured up. Substance abuse sounds so much cleaner, somehow more acceptable, but the truth is, at his worst, my sweet brother was that shadowy figure in the dirty hallway with a needle stuck up his arm. Yes, I think it is good that “drug addiction” is now recognized as a disease and people are less judgemental, more inclined to be sympathetic to those suffering from the affliction, but I wonder if taking this disease out of the gutter is all good? Certainly, in terms of treatment, it is. But does it give those dabbling in drugs an out? A way to say, “hey, I’m not an addict, I’m the victim of a disease?” I don’t know the answer, but I do know that substance abuse should not be minimized, nor swept under the rug. Those afflicted do need medical help, but I wonder if presenting it as a disease rather than exposing the horror of the lives of those afflicted is a good idea.
At his worst, my sweet little brother was a liar. He lied to everyone. His lies came so easily and after years of heroine abuse, his lies were not even remotely believable. He would call me and ask for money for his electric bill. He would tell me that without the money, he would lose power in the cold NY winter. I used to send him money at first but then realized, he only wanted it for drugs. I then wised up and told him I would send the money to the electric company directly and asked for his account number, to which he promptly hung up after a string of profanities. He threatened all of us, most notably my father whom he threatened with a hammer in one of his drug rages. He stole my parents car and left it in the middle of a busy highway when it ran out of gas. My handsome little brother who used to pride himself on having the latest clothes , slept on park benches, was filthy and looked every bit the homeless addict he was. He disappeared for a few years and no one knew whether he was dead or alive. Those two years nearly broke my mother, as the not knowing reached epic proportions. We saw her health fail as each day took more and more from her. When he surfaced, it’s not as though it brought great relief. He was shot at and beaten up. My other brothers risked their lives trying to get him out of dangerous situaitons. When he did go into rehab as an ultimatum, he would curse out those trying to help him, assuring them he was only there because the courts either mandated it or my parents did in order to give him a place to live. There is more, but this isn’t intended to malign my brother’s character. At the core of my brother was a generous and loving heart of gold. He was fiercely loyal to our family and loved each and everyone of us. When my son was born he was traveling out west with his then girlfriend and would make stops along the way to see if his nephew had been born yet (this was before cell phones made it easy to keep in touch). When I was going through my divorce, he would call at odd hours of the day or night, just to see if i was okay and because he sensed I needed company. He rescued a dog who had been chained to a bodega in his neighborhood in a rainstorm for days. He walked by each day and finally, in his typical fashion, he said “screw it” untied the dog and took him home to care for him. He loved that dog and the dog was loyal and loving to him to the end. No, my brother was not a horrible person, but when addicted, he did horrible things. It was the disease. When under the influence, my brother ceased to be.
And that is where I am torn as we fight this battle in our country over addiction. We need more funding for programs. We need more funding for transitions after rehab. One of my brother’s biggest problems when he finally got clean was that he couldn’t find a job. It has been so long since he had been in the workforce and certainly his once razor sharp mind was affected by the years of drug abuse. He was not in the best physical shape, but he wanted a job rather than handouts. He wanted and needed to feel useful. When he didn’t, he sought comfort in drugs and his gang of addicts again. Ironically, the suit he was buried in was the one my parents bought him for a job interview. He never got the job. So rehabilitation must also include job training and support. But I also feel we need to do a better job of painting a realistic picture to our youth of what addiction really looks like, as a deterrent. Both of my sons have told me they would never touch drugs because they saw what it did to their uncle and our family. Not everyone has firsthand experience. I believe the cold, harsh realities of abuse should be better represented to the public.
I also feel that there must be education available to parents and families to recognize early signs. In my family, I now see signs that my brother was troubled from an early age. He always had a complex as the youngest son. He was never as academically gifted as our older brother. He was never as athletically gifted as our middle brother. I was the only girl, giving me a special place in the family as well. Chris always felt as though he had something to prove. He wanted to be recognized and he unfortunately went about it in the wrong way, falling in with the wrong crowd and getting recognition for his popularity and his ability to function despite all the drugs he started doing at an early age. Would it have made a difference if we all tried to find something that Chris alone could excel at and recognize him for, giving him his own special spot in our family? Chris also had a very quick and often aggressive temper,even as a child. I remember once he was angry with me when I was babysitting and told me he wanted to kill me..he even picked up a knife, granted it was a butter knife, but still…..My brothers and I didn’t take it seriously….we thought he was kidding…but was he?? When our beagle found a baggie of pot downstairs in his room, should my parents have taken it more seriously rather than being upset, but assuming “all the kids were doing it” and believing him when he said it was a one time deal? When he didn’t get his diploma at his college graduation because he didn’t finish a class, should we all have looked into that a little more rather than shrugging and saying “typical Chris”. Had we done so, we would have realized his addiction had not only gotten worse, leading to more partying and less caring but we may have seen that he went from just partying to dealing. At that point, he felt he made so much money dealing, who needed a real job? He began to enjoy his role and even celebrated it. He once told me he was just as addicted to living on the edge, as he was to drugs. That is the distortion drug abuse creates.
Chris had a good high school friend who died of an overdose at the same time they were all finishing college. The family claimed in public was a heart attack. The boy was 22 and had been using for years. My parents chose to believe it was a fluke heart attack. At the time, I tried to talk to Chris and tell him basically, that the same fate would await him if he didn’t cool it on the drugs. He just laughed his charming laugh and said “Don’t worry sis. I just did it in college. I can stop anytime.” He couldn’t and he had been doing it long before college. I’m not saying any one thing is to blame, but in looking back there were so many signs that Chris had issues that could lead him down the wrong path and once there, there were so many signs that he was not a casual user. How did we miss them? Were we all so busy with our own lives that we didn’t see them? Or did we not want to see them, hoping that we were wrong and Chris would straigthen out?
I realize this is all hindsight, but when I look at pictures of my little brother, when he was sweet and funny and smart and generous, I can’t help but wonder what I could have done to help him. Of course there is nothing I can do now, but I want to do something to help others; other families, other sisters, other parents, other victims of this horrendous disease. I want to make sure that we, as a nation, are doing all we can to help not only treat this, but more importantly, to prevent this from taking hold and taking the lives of so many other people. I feel we are missing an important piece to the puzzle. I am just not sure what it is, but as a nation, we need to find it and fast.
On Chris’ birthday, I looked a picture of him with my grandmother, on our deck in Anchorage, overlooking the Cook Inlet. He looked so happy and healthy and I remember, at the time it was taken, thinking “He’s finally all better. I have my brother back.” I didn’t get him back until two relapses later, but I did get him back, not all of him, the drugs left him broken in many ways, but his amzing heart was intact, as was his keen sense of humor. I will always be grateful we got that heart back, I just wish it had been for longer.
New Endings 