My Brother's Drug Addiction Is Tearing Apart My Family

by Kelsey

My older brother is 19 and has been using since he was a freshman in high school. I always knew about it, but was too afraid to say anything to my parents about it (i was in middle school at the time).

In the past year it has gotten a lot worse. He has switched from marijuana to other drugs like Oxycontin. My parents eventually found out and tried to get him to go to rehab, which lasted about 3 days.

The only friends that he has are drug addicts too, and this past summer his friend died from an overdose. A week after that, he was high on some sort of pain killer that I have never heard of before and crashed his car into a street lamp.

It did a lot of damage and he would have been dead if he had not been wearing his seat belt. Whenever I saw him at the hospital, he finally broke down and promised that he would stop.

He didn't stop and now he has dropped out of college with no job. He has tried stealing my mothers jewelry for money. My mom tells me how its driving a wedge in her marriage with my dad, because she wants to kick him out and my dad won't let her.

She has also become depressed trying to hold all of her feelings inside and needs to start talking to a therapist. What really scares me the most is that i have a younger brother who I see going down the same path.

I have really distanced myself from my older brother and we don't have a close relationship at all, but I wonder if telling him everything that he is doing to our family would make him stop (I have actually never spoken a word to him about his addiction).

I could really use some advice on what to do about him, my younger brother, mom or anything! My family sometimes pretends like there isn't a problem and I don't really have anyone to talk to about this.