Drugfree.org Share

I shared the entry below on drugfree.org last month...

I'm not an addict, I'm not the parent of an addict - I am a daughter and a sister caught in the middle of addiction looking for a voice.
How do you become a sister with no brother? Well the story begins something like this...A smart, loving kid from a good home...and then ends with, tragically he lost his battle with addiction in December of 2005. I have read stories like these so many times...too many times. Brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, unable to break the chains of addiction. My family's story is no different - full of pain, worry, hope, unfailing love, and faith. My brother did lose his battle with addiction in December 2005. The coroner even told my mom that his 23 year old organs were that of a heavy drug user. He started abusing prescriptions as a teenager - stealing from medicine cabinets with his friends - numbing the pain of their boring suburban lives. They stumbled upon Oxycodone not knowing that it would be the pill that would cause the struggle of his life. His teenage years and 21st birthday went by with many struggles - lost weekends, tales of Ketamine distribution, dodging the DEA, treatment programs, and eventual methadone treatment. I watched and listened to it all as a college student and young adult kind of helpless...never knowing what to believe when he or my parents relayed these frightening scenes. Even when we all thought he was clean, on his wedding day I noticed syringe caps on his spare bedroom's floor. He told me they were old but I shouldn't have believed. Around the time his daughter was born, we all believed the nightmare was over. He was working on coming off the methadone treatments...but one night he mixed methadone with another drug and he was gone. I lost my only sibling. I was a sister with no brother.
I put on the brave face to support my family. I even sang Amazing Grace at his funeral. I cried when I was alone but I held it together for my parents. I wanted everyone to see that I was OK.
Over a year later, I was approached by a friend, who was an addiction counselor at a county jail, to come share my story with a group of inmates who were housed in a special unit working on their sobriety. I felt very unqualified to speak to anyone about addiction or recovery but I said yes. I knew I had a story but I was not quite sure how to share it or if anyone even wanted to hear it. My mother gave me the connection I needed. These men and I at least had one thing in common, a momma. I showed them a picture of my brother from Thanksgiving with our mother and his daughter on the last day I saw him alive. I read aloud my mother's journal entries beginning the day my brother died. I pointed at an oversized version of my brother's death certificate showing the cause of death so they could see that death by overdose was real. The truth that I was not very close to my brother was exposed as I explained how hard it is to be around someone who is always high. I shared the reality of having rehearsed hearing that my brother was found dead and what I would say to my parents to comfort them in some small way. I shared my feelings of fear and anger that not only had I lost a brother but also the mother I had known.
When I walked into the jail that day all of the fear and doubt left my body as I told this story to a room full of inmates. I cried with grown men over the death of my brother and the pain my family endured. It was the first time I had really opened up about my brother's addiction struggle and his eventual death. I'm not sure I helped anyone that day but they helped me. I think as a sibling I have a unique perspective on addiction because it's like being an outsider who is on the inside.