[caldimoore]

Hi, I’m hoping I can get some good advice on here.. my 28 year old brother has got an alcohol and cocaine addiction – this has been the case for at least 6 years now. We have tried getting him help through NHS, doctors etc but he just doesn’t want to get the help, and on the one occasion he did decide it was the right thing to do, he gave up after a couple of meetings because he just didn’t care about helping himself. My biggest concern (besides his health and wellbeing) is that he lives with my mum and gets extremely violent when he returns home from his ‘bender’, trashing the house, threatening my mum and pushing her around. She is petrified of him, but won’t ring the police because she’s scared of his reaction, the same reason why she won’t kick him out. The neighbours have called the police a few times but they won’t do anything unless she presses charges (again she wont because of the repercussions) or if they are called out 3 times in the same day. She is becoming ill over all the worry, years of sleepless nights and anxiety over how he will be when he returns home. Today I rang the NHS for advice to be told that there is literally nothing that can be done without his consent – which won’t happen because he’s too self involved to want to change. I’m worried that instead of a door being thrown down the stairs, next time it will be my mother – or that my brother will end up severely ill or worse. What on earth can we do? Does anyone know of any private rehabs or interventions that don’t need his consent to get the ball rolling? Or has someone experienced a similar thing and have advice on what to do? Essentially two lives are at stake, I just find it so frustrating that they have to have the consent of an addict who has no intention of changing their ways!

[kklost]

I felt I couldn’t read and not reply.

I feel for you and can hear the pain in your words. Honestly sounds like you all have been living in a nightmare.

I personally don’t know of anywhere that he could be sent without his consent. I’d have thought it would be through a court, possibly being sectioned.

But I would say your mum has to stand up and do something now, she is enabling him and this won’t end until she cuts those strings. It will be another 6 years and you will all be in the same position.

So many posts I’ve read are of people who have done everything they possibly can… for partners/family and it all seems to end the same way, them shattered by these other peoples choices.

I hate drugs. I hate them even more since I’ve been dragged into this world. Only since May for me, but I have zero tolerance for it. It just kills the person that they once were!

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