Exo

This might be a long read and I'll try to make it as brief as possible. For those who care enough to read thank you in advance. I need serious advice on what to do with my little brother.

My brother Ryan is 19 years old. He'll be 20 in June. My brother has serious mental problems. The problem is that I honestly don't know what's wrong with him. If there was a disease called "being a f*cking scumbag assh*le" then he would have that.

I believe this all started when he severely broke his leg when he was 15 years old. He broke his tibia and fibia in two places while snowboarding. He spent five days in the hospital on probably the strongest pain killers known to man that a hospital can legally distribute because the idiotic doctors at the hospital he was taken too decided that the best way to fix an injury like that was merely to set the bones and put a cast over it. Every time he moved he was in agonizing pain. We somehow brought him home from the hospital and made him a makeshift bedroom in the basement so that he could have easier access to the bathroom and have access to our television. Two painful weeks went by and he couldn't even walk to the bathroom he was in so much pain. We brought him to a different hospital and they called the other doctors idiots and surgically implanted steel rods in his leg. His pain decreased but he still had to spend at least a month in bed recovering. He was prescribed pain killers the whole time.

I believe that was what set in motion all the events I'm going to describe.

• After he got back to school his grades plummeted. He was always a B student and now he was lucky to get a C. He must have set a record for school absences and he cut class every day. He served in school suspension for cutting every other day and was told that he'd have to stay back a year due to the absences. This is where my mother comes in.
• My mother went to the school and somehow was able to get them to give him another chance and let him more on to senior year. Senior year comes around and he does the exact same thing. He cuts class. He doesn't go to school. His grades are worse than ever. The school feels like they've been sh*t on and rightfully so and they decide again to keep him back another year. Again my mother pleads with them and somehow gets them to consider giving him one last chance by letting him serve his detentions and pass summer school. He didn't walk at graduation. He barely got through summer school. Barely.
• After high school he had a series of jobs that went nowhere. He worked at Burger King and told us he was being made a manager. A week after that announcement he told us that he quit because he wasn't being treated fairly. I thought this was suspicious and I went to Burger King. He was fired for taking somebodies paycheck and trying to cash it. I don't even know how that's possible but he did it. I confronted him about it and he denied it.
• The next job he had was working at a pizza place. My mother had a suspicion that he wasn't working there so I decided to pay a visit to them. Before I went inside I called him and asked if he had work today and he said he worked for a couple hours in the morning and that they told him to take the rest of the day off. I went inside and they told me that they fired him a week ago. I asked why and they said that they believe he has a drug problem and that he just wasn't stable enough to work there.

This isn't the first time he's had a problem with drugs. Before his broken leg my father found him in possession of an ounce of weed that was being used for sale. This is actually a common thing in my town. My best friends have sold weed and some still do. I occasionally smoke some weed so this has always been a somewhat soft spot for me. My father actually gave it back to him because he thought that he'd be in debt with some drug dealer. This shouldn't have happened. Knowing what I know now. We should have done something about that. I don't know what but we should have done something.

Over the last couple years my family (it's just the four of us) have been noticing things that we just can't explain. Money has been missing. Electronics have been missing. My brother and father are volunteer firefighters and the department uses a banquet hall and bar to generate money. My father noticed money missing from the cash drawer and put in a camera to see if he could catch the thief. My father works over 40 hours a week and he mistakenly trusted my brother enough to let him know that there was a camera in the hall. The very next day the camera was ripped out of the wall. The very next day. The files were still saved and my father witnessed a person at two in the morning with the same build and height as my brother walk in, try to open the cash drawer, fail and then leave. We couldn't see his face. He was wearing a sweatshirt of the high school he "graduated" from. My father approached him about this. He denied stealing anything. He didn't deny being there.

My brother has also been in trouble with the cops. They all have to do with speeding tickets and court dates. My brother has had quite a number of speeding tickets and license violations. All of which has been taken care of and what I mean by that is paid for by my dad. He hasn't paid for anything. The last incident with court involved my brother taking my parents car and blowing a highway red light at 80 miles and hour. The light had been red for almost a minute. If it wasn't three in the morning he would have been killed along with the girl in his passenger seat. The cop pulled him over and wrote him three tickets and told him to go home. The same cop found him at a 24 hour deli 20 minutes later eating a sandwich and wrote him another ticket. My brother had to pay $1000 ticket and had his license taken away for three months. My father paid the ticket.

This past year has been pretty eye opening. It started in the summer. This is the three months he didn't have a license. In the beginning of July my brother was like a different person. He was engaging. He was enthusiastic. He was outgoing. The problem was that it was very very strange. Out of nowhere he decided that he was going to compete in a bike race to raise money for cancer. Remember that. Cancer is going to play a big role at the end of this story. The paper ended up doing a story on him and they interviewed my dad. My father had to say all these great things about my brother to this reporter. Little did the paper know that my father was making all this stuff up. My brother didn't deserve recognition.

Ryan never did the race.

My brother during that summer also told us and was completely convinced that he was going to run for council of our town. It took us a week to get him to realize that nobody would vote for a 19 year old kid who barely graduated high school, was jobless, had no drivers license, and didn't go to college.

All that changed in October when my brother stopped going out. He stopped smoking weed. He stopped hanging out with all of his friends. He worked for a short time with a friend of the family doing yard work but he soon left that job. My brother fell into a depression. He's been in it until right now. He hasn't worked in months. He's literally been on the couch the entire time watching tv and sleeping.

Here's the thing though. During that time I've never had a better relationship with him. He was like my best friend. We hung out and watched movies and joked and just acted like brothers were supposed to act. I finally thought that all that sh*t was behind him and now we had to just work on getting him out of a depression and back to being an actual person. We were completely supportive and didn't get on his case about spending all his time at home and doing nothing. He's sick. We set up doctors appointments. We set up time with a psychiatrist. He's on Xanax for his anxiety, prozac, and a mood stabilizer. He was getting better.

All this changed two weeks ago.

I came home one day and found him in the kitchen eating ice cream out of the box at the counter. I looked into his eyes and they were red as hell. He was high as hell. I asked him if he was high and he told me that he went to a friends house who just had his first kid (at 19) and they celebrated a bit (yes I know. Retarded. This is my town). They smoked and he came home. I actually wasn't mad. I told him not to make it a habit and left it at that.

He has smoked every single day since. The person who he was buying it from called me and told me he bought enough to sell and he wanted to let me know. My brother admitted to selling a bit to "make some money" and I told him that he was forbidden to be a drug dealer and that after he sold the rest he was done. This was my mistake. He still says he hasn't sold anything since but the other day my father counted 20 Xanax missing from the bottle. My brother told him they fell down the sink. He sold them.

My parents aren't idiots. They are just very very forgiving people. My parents and I know that if we kick him out of the house he's most likely never going to come back and he's going to die in a ditch somewhere on drugs. We can't let this happen.

This is the last thing and the main reason of why I'm writing this thread.

For the past two weeks he;s been smoking weed. I mentioned that. What I didn't mention is that he makes no attempt to hide it. I've come home ever day and smelled weed in my house and so have my parents. My mother has breast cancer. She has pleaded with him to stop smoking in the house. Pleaded. Two night ago my mom witnessed him buying a bag of weed from some ****ing c*nt in front of my house. When he came inside she broke down and started crying and screaming at him saying how can he do this; that he is stabbing her in the back; that he's stabbing his mother with cancer in the back. She screamed and cried all in front of my eyes.

My brother went into his room and rolled a blunt.

Ten minutes later he was outside smoking it. My mother was still crying.

I ripped it out of his hands and threw it in his face and he called me an ******* and didn't understand why I was screaming at him. He was unaware of what he did. Either that or he just didn't care.

Yesterday I came home from work and told him how disgusting he was I called him a scumbag c*cksucker. I almost spit on him. I told him if he didn't stop that he was going to lose a brother and gain another parent. I would no longer keep certain things from my parents and I would flush every ounce of weed I found. I made him promise me and for the time being it actually looked like he was listening to me.

I came home today and was home an hour before I smelled weed. 24 hours after ALL THAT. He's smoking a blunt on my deck while I'm ten feet away.

I dragged him inside. I nearly beat the **** out of him. I threw the blunt in the toilet. I called him the nastiest things I could think of and I meant every word. He looked at me like I was an ******* and he shrugged his shoulders and left.

I'm distraught. I don't know what to do. He doesn't care about his family. If the three of us died tomorrow he wouldn't care. My brother doesn't care if his family dies. I believe that in my heart.

I've known heroin addicts who have robbed people at gun point and what he's doing is more f*cked up than that.

He just came home. He's whistling.

I'm completely serious. He's ****ing whistling.

This sounds like I just made this all up. I didn't. This is actually my life. Maybe one day I can turn this into a book but for right now my family and I have to live with it every day and he doesn't care whatsoever. I'm almost certain I'm going to lose my brother. Either he'll be dead or dead to me and I'm scared.

I don't know what to do.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I need to get out of here for a while. If I don't respond until late at night that's why. I'll respond to any questions or anything you guys might have to say. Thanks again.

LoathsomePete

First of all I am very sorry about your mother's cancer diagnosis. I don't believe I said that when you originally posted that so I just want to rectify that. I hope she beats it, I really do.

Onto your brother... His progression into theft is where I would have drawn the line and it's where I would have cut him loose. I understand here's your brother, but stealing from charity is one of the most despicable acts one can do. As for what you can do, well... he needs to hit his bottom, and that will be impossible while he's still living under his parents roof. There's two outcomes, he hits his bottom and it scares or disgusts him enough into getting his shit together, or he keeps on keeping on and there's not a goddamn thing you can do about it. Addiction is one of the most insidious things, especially when it's a family member and someone you care about. But if he's bringing drugs into the house, smoking it indiscriminately, and showing absolutely zero empathy for the people he's living with, it's time to throw him to the wilds. Hopefully he'll hit his bottom sooner rather than later, but regardless of whatever good intentions you do, from the sounds of things they're going to go to waste.

I'm really sorry for your situation though.

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Sansa Stark

Honestly, there's nothing you can do, like Pete said he's gonna have to hit bottom for anything to happen and you can't forcibly institutionalise him or anything

sorry this is happening to you though

Exo

Thanks for the wishes towards my mother. All signs point to her kicking the **** out of that cancer. I appreciate the kind words.

I also completely agree with you on the whole issue of rock bottom. I just don't know if I can actually get myself to let him go. Of all the ****ty things he's done I still love him completely. I honestly believe that my brother has two personas. One of them is a loving caring person and the other is a ****ing scumbag drug addict. I need to kill it before it kills my brother. I'd hate myself if I didn't.

Thanks Herm. My mother was talking about sending him to rehab for the weed. I said that was silly. 15 year old girls go to rehab for weed. My brother needs serious therapy. We've already began the search for a good doctor. If he doesn't get better with serious therapy then I think we're going to have to kick him out.

Trollheart

Jesus Exo! You'd think he'd realise you have enough on your plate with the shocking news your mother got. I have no idea what you could do. Maybe if he screwed up and had to spend a night or so in jail it might knock some sense into him, maybe it would make him worse, I don't know, but he needs something. In the old days they'd send him to the army or into the priesthood or god knows what.

But I agree with Pete and Herm: you can't allow him to destroy your lives when he clearly doesn't give a ****. One thing that needs to stop is your dad bailing him out. Let him pay his own ****ing fines, and if he can't let him go to court and if necessary to prison. Maybe it will straighten him out. At worst, you and your family will get some time away from him.

I think the main problem is that your parents are wrapping him in cotton wool (your mother with the school and your dad with the fines) and so he thinks everyone will always be there to clean up his mess. It's time he learned to take responsibility for his actions. As long as people keep making excuses for him and sorting out his problems/debts, he's going to have no reason or incentive (considering how deaf he is to your pleas and how little he seems to care about you all) to change, buckle down, live in the real world.

I think you and your parents need to sit him down, set an ultimatum. If he doesn't follow the rules he's out of the house. And make sure he knows you're serious: this is not just some empty threat. And when he fails to keep the rules, pack his bags and leave them on the porch, have the locks changed and dont let him in. If necessary call the cops.

It's a tough situation man, I really feel for you, but it looks like you've tried being reasonable and now tougher measures are required.

Sorry I can't be of more help. Let us know how it develops. We're thinking of you. And you parents.

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PoorOldPo

I am very sorry about your mother, like Pete said, I hope she beats it. My jaw dropped reading this, I really don't know what to say. You have done all you can, and your parents sound like amazing people, I really pity their situation, even more than yours. Are you sure he isn't on something stronger than just weed? I think that something needs to happen to him to scare him, the lads here say rock bottom, while, I don't have a brother myself, I don't know if I would wish that on him, because it would mean putting his life in danger, but I don't know if there is any other way out of this for him. You really have done all you can do. I know you have tried talking to him, but maybe he needs psychiatric help?

Anyway, I don't know if I have been of any help, probably not. But please keep us posted.

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Scarlett O'Hara

I completely agree with Trollheart, but at the same time I understand why your brother is behaving the way he is. Because he's so hooked to weed his judgement is clouded, he's justifying his actions because he feels it's the only thing that is making him happy. Everything else falls secondary to that.

I definitely think it's time he moves out. If he's going to screw up his life, you need to let him do it. I think referring him to a rehab won't work because he needs to want to quit himself. Until he does it will be a waste of time and money.

I am sorry that your mom has cancer but am very pleased to hear she's most likely going to be cancer-free soon. I really hope you can be strong about this situation with your brother. The only way you can fix him is by letting him go.

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Paul Smeenus

I think you've been given the right advice in that he's never going to get better until he wants to, at some level even if it's just because he's cold and hungry and seeks some shelter. I got sober almost 18 years ago because I was homeless and wanted a roof over my head.

The one thing I will add to this is that, you and your family are not alone, there are other families that know your pain and I recommend that you and your family seek them out for support, lest you and your family suffer the all-too-familiar syndrome that will surely develop without said support.

The best of these, without question, is Al Anon (not to be confused with AA, although they do work together). And I understand the reluctance to seek help, but really that reluctance is all the more reason to do so.

anticipation

I think it's more likely that he's abusing weed as a symptom of self-loathing and depression. Seriously depressed people are escapists, and most of the actions your brother is doing sound like that of a young guy wanting to self-destruct because of a negative self image. The reckless behavior, apathy, and mood changes are indicative of hopelessness but i agree that he has far to go to hit rock bottom. He still has a support system and really has no incentive to accept his reality, let alone acknowledge it at all.

CLOSER

I am sorry about your brother, mother - and the stress you must be going through. Some of your brother's behavior that you've described correlates to incidents in my life to the T that I've witnessed. A former friend, a family member, etc. This is why I believe my opinion will offer you a unique perspective.

Since high school he has not had a consequence. Made it through graduation, and financial responsibilities are aided by your father. Even if it means lying to the paper, your brother knows it will be done. Your parents clearly love him very much. In no way am I accusing your parents for poor actions - in fact they sound fantastic. However with what it sounds like their son is going through, there is a different type of aid needed. Now you are at the point where it sounds like he is at an emotional rock bottom. He is still in there, the 'loving caring person' that you refer to. He just forgot how to be him. With practicing escaping from the reality of accountability, compassion and honesty - he has accepted this disconnected person he has become.


As a brother it sounds like you have done your best to be patient, assertive and even took the role as detective with visiting former work places. Unfortunately it's time to understand that the next steps really are not up to you, your mom or dad. What does your brother want to do? Who is he? A scumbag drug addict? Or a 19 year old self medicating to cope with what he perceives to be intolerable feelings? It sounds like the only decisions he's ever made were ones completely opposite to paths he has been given.

The harsh reality is that however much assistance your family gives him, he must decide this life is not what he wants. In fact you can not fix him. The best way I can say it is, you can not stitch a wound that only wants to bleed.

Elaborate lies, " A week after that announcement he told us that he quit because he wasn't being treated fairly".. all sound like ways to cope with an unlikeable self. Is his internal mantra one which chants the woes of an unfair life?

Professional help, and a little more patience to endure. You have been a great brother. It will be a while before your brother can be a good one back, or even begin being a son - if he still does not know how to function just as himself.

I'm sure a lot of what I've said is over simplified or presumptuous. I can only hope that perhaps bits and pieces might offer insight.

Best wishes.