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Family Dynamics
The Sober Sibling Belongs to a Club No One Wants to Join
A Personal Perspective: When ties that bind are stretched too tight.
Posted January 22, 2024 Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
My husband Carl is at the sink, washing the last of the dinner dishes; I'm drying them and finishing up. I ask if he ever worries I'll start drinking heavily like my brothers. “No,” he answers.
"But how do you know?" I press him, as I lift a dinner plate into a cabinet.
“I just do,” he says.
“But how can you be sure?” I don’t let it go.
“Because I see what you’ve been through with them,” he answers.
We had just come from the Kessler Institute, a New Jersey rehab facility where my younger brother was recuperating after yet another overdose. By that time, he was more into drugs than alcohol. His soon-to-be-ex wife had called to let me know he was there, and as frustrated as the news was, I wanted to visit him. What was a few more wasted hours when it came to him? He was still my brother, and with every new crisis, I prayed he would turn around. At least I knew he was safe, unlike the years I didn’t know where he was. My mind wanders and I think about the two of us as little kids, lingering at the dinner table, having a grand time stirring our ice cream until it was soup.
Carl was adamant—he was not going with me. “You know I hate being on the parkway with those crazy drivers,” I pleaded. “Please drive me.” He finally agreed but said he wouldn’t go into my brother’s room with me. This was not like him, but I realized his rebellion was a sign of how much he cared for me. Carl had probably reached his limit with this brother.
I really had no reason to ask if my husband worried about me following the path my brother found himself on, or for that matter, my parents and my other brother, too. I was just ruminating. I’m really not worried about that happening to me. There’s just no way. I was always the responsible one, the overachiever, devastated on seeing the chaos alcohol can cause.
I started reading about alcoholism—now called substance use disorder—early, when Antabuse was one of the few medications to try and thwart the urge. Our family doctor prescribed it for my parents, but since it makes you sick, they wouldn’t take it. I was floundering as a kid, sad much of the time and not knowing where to turn. Al-Anon may have started around that time, but even if I knew of a group around me I couldn’t have attended. It would have shamed my parents and they would have been ashamed and furious at me.
Much later I learned that the gene may have bypassed me. I can't say whether it's still true, but at one point I found research indicating that as sons of an alcoholic father, my brothers were more susceptible to heavy drinking than I was. Coupled with other vulnerabilities, like being risk-takers because of our upbringing, they were easy targets for the disorder. Part of me also wonders if I simply looked around early on and said, “Nuh-uh. I’m not going to end up like them.”
I also know that substance use disorder has increased among seniors in the last few years. I’m in that cohort now, but I still drink only moderately. That doesn’t mean I’m unscathed ― I’m a victim of alcohol and drugs in other ways. One is that I’ve found it hard to disassociate from my brothers’ poor choices, or, to use the jargon, I fell prey to codependence.
As I exited the elevator on my brother’s floor, he approached in a wheelchair, using his feet to motor toward me. I grabbed the handlebars and told him I’d take over. When we entered his room I could hardly hold back tears as I caught sight of his false teeth in a cup on his nightstand. I felt so stupid. Of course he could have lost all his teeth by then, whether from lack of care, or fighting. We were awkward with each other. “You really scared me this time,” I told him. “I’m hoping you finally get your life on track.”
“No, this time it will be different, don’t worry,” he assured me. The time passed too quickly. We hugged and exchanged “I love you” as I left. A year earlier he had called me collect to bail him out for yet another transgression. I didn’t ask what he did that time. When I turned him down, he screamed that he was disowning me. I guess he changed his mind.
That was one time I was strong. If there were an award for enabling, I’d be a top contender. I think of the times he lied to me and disappointed me. I recall the treatment programs, the lost jobs, and I didn’t see a good ending for him unless things changed. He didn’t live through the decade, but I never gave up hope.
A few years later, I was pulled into service for my older brother. I answered the phone at 2 a.m. to him requesting that I pick him up from jail in his town. A DUI. A former cop himself, I didn’t know if the police had charged him, but they wouldn’t let him drive his car home. Carl came with me to drive my brother’s car home. My brother lived almost an hour from me, and Carl and I both had to work the next day. “Never again,” I told this brother. “That’s your one chance at passing Go.”
His drinking hadn’t yet progressed to the point where it would kill him, but it would do that, rampaging through I don’t even know what organ or organs. “Something burst,” was all the emergency room doctor told my nephew, my brother’s son, when he died.
It's not easy being the sibling of someone with substance use disorder. A saying that circulates within the community of people whose loved ones suffer from the condition goes, “Hate the disease, not the person.” I’ve walked a fine line between trying to be understanding and feeling less generous. And I’ve come to believe that watching a family member kill themselves is a grief you carry with you forever.
My younger brother used to say “Alcohol doesn’t run in our family, it gallops,” and then he’d laugh. I never laughed with him. My older brother went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for a number of years, and then he stopped. As I do with my younger brother, I hang on to the one or two good memories about my older brother from when I was younger, like the time he took me to the local mall to practice learning to drive. More often than not, I recall the ice cubes clinking in his glass when he’d call me.
Both brothers may be gone, but their ghosts live on. I think about trying ayahuasca, the hallucinogenic gaining acceptance as a therapeutic treatment for working through past upsets, for one. I wonder if it would help with the sad memories, but I don't think it's for me. I don’t think I’m brave enough. I have a calmer life now and a partner who gives rather than takes like my brothers. In those respects, I’m a survivor, and very lucky.
