Cocaine addiciton question and story.

[soonerg]

First off, damn this site sure makes it difficult to register.

I am posting for two reasons really. One, it is nice to have an outlet. Secondly, I figure many of you have experienced this and might offer soome perspective. This post will probably be long because I want to include all information that might be pertinent for you to respond.

Adolescence to 18 - My brother was born in 1974 and I was born in 1979. My father got back from Vietnam and married my mother right away. My father supposedly had a drinking problem which was not addressed until 1979, the year I was born. He was also a lousy father and quite hard on my brother. However, in 1979 he went back to college on the GI bill and graduated with straight A's with a degree in accounting, passed CPA on first try, worked for Arther anderson and has made a fine career.

By the time I was born, my old man had quit drinking cold turkey and instead worked out religiously. He has worked out every day of his life since he was 30 and now he is 58. He even has Arthritis and still works out. However, he was never much of a father as he grew up in a broken home. He provided very well, but he was harsh and the fighting with my mother was really bad. He never hit my mother that I can remember, but punching holes in walls and throwing flashlights through walls happened. My mom could give as much as my dad, so these were real stand offs.

My brother took the brunt of my old man's behavior because he was 7 by the time my dad quit. Once I was born, he had quit and I have never see him drink any alcoholic beverage in my life.

My brother started smoking weed in high school, and eventually started selling it. He was one of those weed smokers that smokes every day all day, 365 days a year. He had social anxiety problems, and he was very short and a little over weight. You could say his self-esteem was low, but he did have many friends.

18 - 32

He continued to smoke and sell weed. At the same time he had a job and went to a university. At this time, he was selling really high grade marijuana and thus attracted many wealthy college students. He was never a huge dealer but dealt enough for some nice spending cash and free weed. At 25, he graduated with a degree in Marketing and went on to several sales positions where he failed miserably. I should say that during this time he would do some harder drugs from time to time. This was prime time in the Dallas Rave Extasy scene and what not. However, extasy was not his thing and Coke was always hard to find a steady supply of without dealing with gangs which he did not do.

During this time he always had a job, and pretty much handled things on his own from the age of 18. I moved in with him in 2001, and did not notice anything abnormal. He was smoking weed every day but that was normal for him. I did not see any real heavy drug use. What I am trying to say, is that drug use had not destroyed him to the point anyone would notice. He was still paying bills and taking care of himself.

SWIM has probably smoked weed 30 to 40 times in his life. SWIM has tried Coke, Meth, Acid, Pills, but only once or twice with each one. Mainly because SWIM hung out in a different crown and knew how easily addicted SWIM could get.

32 - present day

About four years ago, I got married and moved to Denver to start a good job. My wife and I did well and I lost contact with my brother and never really talked. Recently, the wife and I moved back home and decided to divorce. Not a bad divorce and we both are still friendly.

I had known my bro was getting worse and worse over the years but was detached. Apparently, he had lost several jobs, got arrested for growing weed, started a new job with greater access to a steady supply of drugs and went on epic binges. Before I got back, he had gone to a month facility, and when he left he moved in with the parents in their retirement home. Not a very good situation. He was supposed to be handing his paycheck to mom every other friday, but he was not doing that and going on huge binges on the weekends.

About this timeis wehn I moved back and got divorced. I stayed in the three bedroom house and was alone. My mother found some weed in his lunch box for work, and they kicked him out. He went to live with a friend and his wife, who also liked Cocain, and did that for a month.

All this time, I figure he has a problem but my mom does tend to exaggerate and I also had my own problems. He shows up two weeks ago and asks if he can stay with me or borrow 100 dollars to pay the electric bill. I really do not care to have my brother stay here so I give him the hundred dollars knowing he would never pay it back. I figured he would leave me alone if he knew he owed me money.

Anyways, he shows up last Friday and tells me he lost his job, which was a 15/hour job doing manual labor. My dad tried to drop him off at a treatment center but it turned out to cost 1000 dollars a month, so then my dad tried to drop him off at a homeless shelter down town, but my brother talked him into taking him back to his car. Then he drove over to my house and broke the news to me. So, we sit down and have a 2 hour conversation of which I learn the extent of his problems............

-Defferred felony offense for cultivation of Marijuana for which he is now on probation.
-Declared Bankruptcy at 30, has 8000 in student loans, a credit history as bad as it gets.
-A Hyundai Elantra stripped down of which he paid a super high price becasue of his credit.
-No savings.
-Very bad health and over weight.
-500 dollars to his name.
-No skills at all! Cannot sale, bad work history, hardly can use a computer, etc.

So you can image hearing all this in one sitting can cause high stress. He had no where else to go, no money, no job, a car on the verge of being taken, a drug habit, and now I am his only hope to sleep inside a house. I also found out he had a wreck about three weeks before and the insurance company cut him a check of around 3000 dollars. Instead of fixing his car, he spends the entire amount on coke.

He also expressed feelings of suicide and despair, which at the time was a bummer, but I think I would prbably feel the same way in his shoes.

Here are some specific questions some of you may be able to answer.

1) He has never shot up. Almost entirely, he snorts cocain. Once he made his own crack but that was not a regular thing. The fact is he could not afford Coke every day so he was never as addicted as some people get. For instance, while he was here he had not done coke in two weeks so he was detoxed. Anyways, is this pretty normal? Is it normal for people who just snort coke to go on huge binges but not every day? Does this mean he is less physically addicted to someone who shoots up or smokes crack every day?

2) He is not a very nice guy. I watch those intervention shows where the family sits down and talks about great memories before addiction and everyone laughs. Honestly, my parents and I agree that we do not have any real fond memories of Eric. He always seemed unhappy and was never real compassionate. His friends stated many times that he always seemed unhappy. Being that he is that profoundly unhappy and in this circumstance, is there any hope? And yes, he has been on anti-depressants and they help but are not a solution.

3) He is not a religious person, which I am not either. Many of the programs that my old man tries to get him involved with follow the traditional twelve step program. For someone who has always rebelled against organize religion, is it possible to successfully complete a program that is based on religion? What other programs are out there?

4) I let him stay with me about a week. We talked every night and I was trying to get the total picture. I got the feeling that there could be no happy ending. He was going to loose his car and had no job. If I allowed him to stay here, he would increasingly rely on me for everything. While I really hated that, he is my brother, and I figured he would commit suicide ont he streets eventually. I thought at least with a computer and a place to stay, he might be able to find work. My parents were really upset with me because I was enabling him, but he had never really screwed me over and I was going to give him a chance. I told him the rules, we talked about a plan and I was just going to take it day to day.

Then out of the blue, my mom was able to get him into the place that normally cost money for free. Keep in mind that over the years my parents have probably spend 20-30K on him and were sick of it. He did not want to go but I insisted and about two days ago I drove him to this place. The place seems nice, but with my brothers attitude, it would not surprise me if he shows up again at my door.

Basically, here is the question. In your experience, are there people that never hit rock bottom? Is it mandatory that you hit rock bottom before you can get sober? Is it possible for an extremely depressed person who has given up on life to recover and become happy? Do most addicts, when they are homeless, commit suicide? Theone reason it woould be hard for me to not allow him to stay with me is that I think he would commit suicide. Have any of you made decisions like that which might have led to that persons suicide?

All done, know it is long but what can you do.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	A detailed description of the problem. Good questions. Following the rules. A certain compassion. Good first post.
	Excellent honest account of a family members addiction.

[Dickon]

First off may I say welcome to the forum, and thank you for making such an interesting first post, and even following the rules! I'm glad you managed to find your way through the registration process.

Your post contains many questions. Let's start with the "rock bottom" concept. That's something one usually encounters in 12-step groups, and perhaps has some grounding in the fact that most people need the balance of pros and cons for a particular action (drug taking) to perceptibly shift before they change it. The fact is that what makes people stop using varies widely from individual to individual. It seems that what your brother has gone through constitutes a significant "bottoming out". My cat quit using drugs (including at various times crack and heroin, he injected too) without losing everything in his life. So, there is no need for your brother to end up prostituting himself for crack, getting AIDS, or some other horror story for him to recover. There is certain evidence that people can "age out" of drug use.

You needn't worry, most homeless addicts do not commit suicide (please don't ask me to provide evidence of this, it's just based on my own experience). But your brother's depression may be a cause for concern here.

I really couldn't possibly answer the question as to whether your brother can recover and become happy. Certainly a lot of very depressed addicts in really bad states of mental health seem to have found happiness after periods of being clean. Clinical depression though may be something not so easily treatable, although abstaining from drugs, eating well, exercising and having healthy friendships and relationships may go a long way to helping.

As for your earlier questions:

1) Hmmm....I don't think this will make much difference. It is certainly not going to make his cause any worse, but he seems to be a binger, rather than a daily user. A lot of cocaine users (and this includes i.v. cocaine and crack users) go on binges. It seems that the major difficulties with quitting cocaine are not "physical" in the sense of those that an alcoholic or heroin addict may face. That said, stimulants can be notoriously difficult to quit, although short periods of abstinence may in certain cases and with some individuals be fairly easily obtained. There may, and I stress, may, be slightly less bad cravings with cocaine used nasally.

2) There's always hope. Maybe the underlying cause of his unhappiness is the reason for why he uses drugs. Perhaps this is the real problem that needs addressing, and addressing this may help significcantly with the derpession too.

3) 12-step programmes are not religious. There are two main references in the steps to things that may be so seen. The first is to the concept of "a power greater than ourselves", which doesn't require spiritual interpretation. The second is to the concept of "God, as we understood him", and this is sometimes understood by atheists and agnostics as the acronym Good Orderly Direction. Some use nature, some prefer something more akin to "the force" of Star Wars. 12-step programmes do not have any affiliation with religions, although they do tend to piss off certain rationalist materialists. There are a whole heap of other treatment modalities, such as Coginitive Behavioual Therapy, that may work better for your brother if he doens't get on with the 12-step approach. The advantage the 12-step method has is that there is a free international support group available almost everywhere.

4) Oh, I think that's the one I answered first!

I can't say I've made any similar decisions, so I can't help you with that one. My advice would be to do what you can within reason. However, if your brother does not want to quit, he won't and there is little you will be able to accomplish.

Nothing is written in stone here, so it's worth maintaining a gentle optimism even if things seems bad.

All the best

Dickon

[soonerg]

Thanks for the info and your opinions on the subject.