* With kind permission from my mother*
My brother was a drug addict by the time he was thirteen.
It started with marajuana and escalated from there. His drug of choice was heroin but he was a poly drug binger and would take anything he could get his hands on.
Life was sometimes scary with a brother on drugs.
There was a time when I loved him. I was always scared of him but I loved him too and I think he loved me. If anyone teased me at school, he was my protector, even though he was two years younger than I and much smaller.
He was also the worst offender.
That’s how I know he loved me.
Sometimes, I thought I hated him. I didn’t though, I just hated what his drug use was doing to him, my mum, my family.
He was pretty violent, my brother. He hit me and threatened me with knives and threw things at me. He choked my mother until she passed out.
The police came often.
The worst time was at Christmas and my mother was at work.
They came with the dogs and searched the house. They pulled all the ornaments off the tree, pulled them apart, while my sister and I looked on, huddled together on the lounge.
They had no warrant and they had no right to be there because we were home alone until Mum finished up.
The whole neighbourhood came out to watch and nobody questioned them as they ripped our home apart looking for drugs because, by then, my brother was a supplier.
They didn’t find anything.
He stole and manipulated and hurt everyone who loved him, especially my mum.
Once he was ‘dumped’ on our lawn after overdosing, by some of his so called ‘mates’ in the early morning hours. My mother hauled him inside, kept him conscious, showered him, made him vomit up the crap he had taken.
She loved him but it was killing her, watching her boy self destruct.
He died when he was 17.
A doctor prescribed him a strong pain killer. He took every single one of the sixty tablets, crushed them, mixed them with water, drew it up into a syringe and injected it into his vein.
He was dead by morning.
It was declared an accident but to this day, I’m not sure.
He had been an addict for such a long time, he knew what he was doing.
My sister’s drug use was much quieter.
It effected her schooling and she didn’t finish year nine but it was in her adult life that it caused the most damage.
She brought two children into the world and chose drugs over them.
I will never understand.
My kids know all about their uncle and they have seen first hand the effects drugs have on families.
I still worry though, especially with the big boy. My sister watched as my mother tried to piece her life back together after Andrew died and yet she turned around and did the same thing.
They say the ability to have addictive tendencies is genetic.
I only hope I’ve taught them well, on the cusp of high school and adolescence and the turbulence of self discovery.
Drugs ruin everything.
