I Battled for My Brother, the Addict
Nothing could save my beautiful brother until he decided to save himself
June 2014
My younger brother Jake* jumped in front of a train. It was his daughter’s birthday and the anniversary of our mother’s death seven years before. He survived, miraculously, and I’m with him in the intensive care ward at the hospital and feel like I am his appointed representative in the world of the sane. I’m one of the few people left who can get through to him, and it has been this way since he was first detained under the Mental Health Act 30 years ago. I don’t want him to die. Our parents are dead, and he’s all I’ve got.
The next few months are very hard. He has to learn to walk on crutches as his broken pelvis heals, and he has $15,000 in drug debts to pay off. He has been using drugs since he was 13, and he is now 46. In the past 10 years, heroin and crack have overtaken everything else in his life.
I spend up to 30 hours a week with him at the mental hospital, writing lists, cartoons, maps of advice, all the suggestions I can think of, but knowing that on the bad nights, when cravings kick in, he’s weak and suicidal. I try to distract him. We play Scrabble. We have picnics by the sunflowers in the community garden. I make him look up toward the sun. He looks…
