Moving on, my brother continued to use drugs and had times where he managed to keep it all together and times when he didn’t. When he didn’t I would step in and help. he has lived with me, my husband and two children several times over the years. I want to mention one of these stays. I was living in rural Ireland and my children were small, when I got the usual phone call from my parents saying that my brother was in trouble, so I stepped in and said that instead of going to rehab he could come and stay with me. He arrived with a ‘friend’ and basically partied for a week, but then whatever he had, ran out and his ‘friend’ went back to the UK. My brother then went into full withdrawals, it was June and we had to keep a fire going at all times, he lay around groaning and looking terrible, and then I could hear him pacing around at night. However after a couple of months he was clean, for the first time in fifteen years. What I didn’t realise is that he needed something to replace it, so when he got his benefit once a fortnight, he would disappear for a couple of days until he had drunk all the money. I had the brilliant idea of taking him to see a commune of people that worshipped a guru, some of whom were ex addicts, but he wasn’t interested! After about a year he met someone and seemed to be happy and healthy and drinking had taken a back seat, she had to continue her studies in London, so they moved to the UK together. Two weeks later he was back into taking heroin and whatever else he could get his hands on and his partner never found out. She finished her studies and asked him to return to Ireland with her and he said no, I knew that always the drug comes first. Can you see the pattern now? He gets in trouble or out of control and I step in to rescue him, and I continued to do this for fifty years! The last part of my story is how I have disentangled myself from my brother and how great it feels.
