How Do You Help a Drug Addict Brother?
How Do You Help a Drug Addict Brother?
Dealing with a drug addict brother is hard. If he is older than you, the brother you always looked up to has fallen short in the hero department in some way. If he is younger than you, then you want to wring his neck and chastise him. Okay, maybe you want to do that either way at times.
Still, you love him. He is a part of you. You share a history, a family, and parents. Still, siblings can also often stand up to each other where others can’t because they have a love/hate relationship for the very reason that they are siblings. With no one else, is there a competitive feel that also can have support.
- Research shows a sibling can have the greatest effect on the addict at the intervention.
Do yourself and your brother a favour: do what you would doin any other situation with him.
Stand up to him and tell him like it is; tell him you love him and you are there for him in support but you are not going to enable the drug addiction. When he feels like everyone else has forsaken him, when he feels embarrassed, you always can make him laugh and tell him that he will overcome.
* First, call a center helpline and set up an intervention.
A professional counsellor is nearly always at these to help the family and the addict. A lot of times, research shows a sibling can have the greatest effect on the addict at the intervention. Sometimes by bringing up an experience shared or promise from long ago a sibling can help a sister or brother face the addiction.
* Next, support your brother in his treatment.
When family sessions are called for, be there. Show him that just as you refuse to enable the addiction, you support the brother fighting the addiction. Let him know you are there for him as he overcomes one of the greatest battles of his life.
* Get into a support group.
There are groups for family members as you find no one else can understand what you are going through but these people can. They are parents, spouses, children, siblings. They know, they understand and they are there for you while you go through this, just as you are for your brother or for someone else’s family member down the road.
“How do you help a drug addict brother? By being a sibling. Calling him on his addiction, making him accountable just as you would in anything else. Again, by being a sibling. Supporting him as he fights the addiction, being there for him just you would in anything else.“
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[...] the aid of a trained expert in Intervention, friends and family of the addict confront the addict lovingly, and without criticism. One-by-one, so he doesn’t feel as though he is being ganged up on, they [...]