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Ask HN: My brother is addicted to alcohol. How do I help him?

9 points by troubledbrother ↗ HN
Hi, I'm a regular here, posting under a throwaway account.

My younger brother (23 years old) seems to be addicted to alcohol. He may also be suffering from depression.

His problems started more than a year ago when he was going through a lot of existential angst. He was quite into reading deep philosophical books and would have heated arguments with his orthodox family about all sorts of metaphysical stuff. He was at university but he would never go to class, sleep all day and read all night. This was passable until he started drinking. He would come home extremely drunk and would shout and swear at his family. Sometimes, things even got a bit violent.

I live abroad, so I could never help much. But I had to fly home a couple of times when things got a bit out of hand. My brother once nearly had a fatal car accident when he was driving drunk.

In the last few months, he seemed to be recovering. He got his degree and had recently started working. His drunken bouts reduced to once every few months. But they still haven't gone completely. In the last few days, he's been getting drunk very frequently and going home in a bad physical state.

Note that my brother and family are in India. His drinking habit may sound like a normal thing for young people to do in the West. However, his drinking is anything but normal. He doesn't hang out much with his friends, mostly drinks alone and ends up in a state where he has no clue what he's doing. Even after nearly killing himself, he is in complete denial that he has any sort of problem. We have tried to get him medical help once but he refuses to co-operate.

I'm scared we will lose him sooner than later if things carry on like this.

I know we need to seek professional help, but doing so is a bit complicated in India. Social complications aside, I'm not sure about the quality of medical services for this sort of thing. I'm not even sure where to start - seek psychological/psychiatric help or medical (as in physical) help.

So, I'm turning to the HN community, which always has some good advice even regarding personal issues such as this. I'm sorry this is not exactly relevant to this forum, but I'm desperately in need for help. I'll appreciate any thoughts or ideas if you have had personal experience dealing with similar problems.

28 comments

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insomniasexx
Get him a 12 step book? Be there for him. He can't and won't quit until he wants to. He must make the decision. Aside from throwing him in rehab (like some do here in the US) there isn't much you can do. All you can do is let him know that you love and support him and want him to get better.

Therapy might help him work out his other personal issues which in turn might help curb the binges.

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jacquesm
If you really want to help your brother I doubt you can do it by remote control.

Have you considered that he's drinking because it brings out the brother in you?

troubledbrother
I can try and visit him more often, but I've just started a startup. Perhaps it's time to revise my priorities.

Have you considered that he's drinking because it brings out the brother in you?

I've never looked at it that way, but if that's the case, me being near him may help.

jacquesm
In the end nobody can change a life except the person whose life it is, but if it were my brother I'd be right there beside him on the off-chance that it would help.

Fortunately my brother is not in to stuff like that.

It's really tough, and one of those things that you have to deal with as an emigrant that is not in the playbook.

Do you have more brothers? If you do can they be of assistance somehow? Does your brother look up to you, see you as a role model? Does he have good friends?

It's tough. My dad was an all-out alcoholic, he drank more than anybody that I've ever seen, before or after, and on top of that he was violent when drunk. It gave me a fantastic warning about what kind of an effect alcohol can have on people and as a result I never drank a drop.

So I really feel for you, but if it turns out that you can't make a difference don't be too hard on yourself.

good luck!

troubledbrother
Do you have more brothers? If you do can they be of assistance somehow? Does your brother look up to you, see you as a role model? Does he have good friends?

I don't have more brothers, but there are a few family members around my brother to help and support him. However, the generation gap is a problem. He does relate best to me and look up to me as a bit of a role model. He doesn't really have any good friends, not any that he hangs out with.

Sorry to hear about your dad and glad that you took a positive lesson from his life.

Thanks for your help.

gojomo
At some point, rushing to "be right there beside him on the off-chance that it would help" may be more hurtful than helpful. As you noted in your first comment, maybe "he's drinking because it brings out the brother in you".

The 12-step world has all sorts of theories about these behaviors, under the titles "codependency" or "enabling" or "rescuing" or "detachment". I can't say for sure whether they're right but someone struggling with these issues, like the OP, may want to familiarize themselves with that literature. A reasonably-sized bookstore will have a large section of books about dealing with alcoholism, as a drinker/alcoholic/friend/child/sibling/parent/spouse/adult-child/stepsibling/etc, in every permutation.

jacquesm
> At some point, rushing to "be right there beside him on the off-chance that it would help" may be more hurtful than helpful.

That too is a possibility, but not a certainty. That is exactly what makes these things so hard.

> As you noted in your first comment, maybe "he's drinking because it brings out the brother in you".

Yes, but I have absolutely no idea if that is the case or not, and even with my own brother (Maurice, 12 years my junior) I'd have a very hard time to figure that one out. Let alone that I could know which way that coin landed for someone else. I haven't a clue, to be frankly. But I thought that saying that might open the OPs eyes to some of the weirder possibilities.

In the end almost all addictions are a from of escape, the question is from what and why and if it can change, and the first step will have to come with recognising there is a problem, which for the moment the OPs brother does not seem to agree with. So that makes it a very complicated and tricky situation.

Unfortunately alcohol addiction is a subject that strikes pretty close to home for me and I could tell you some stories that would make your hair stand on end. This also means that I may not be the most rational person when looking at this as an issue, personally I'm instantly more worried about the brothers nearest family (wife, kids and so on) than the brother himself. Scars like that heal only very slowly.

adw
My heart's going out to you here. First and foremost, I've got to say that.

What I'm going to say next is going to sound dreadful. Being there may help - may well help - but you've got to be prepared, because if you aren't, it won't. Love is not enough. Alcoholism is an illness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism_in_family_systems

dotBen
Have you considered that he's drinking because it brings out the brother in you?

So you are essentially shouldering some/all of the responsibility for the brother's alcoholism upon the OP. That's a big burden to carry, and potentially dangerous + damaging if it is not true.

You're taking a wild guess with that comment, you have no idea, and (maybe unintentionally) your sentence doesn't ask if that could be the answer - you state it as the case (the words 'if' or 'maybe' would have been better here).

When people are looking for answers they can read into the linguistics of things very carefully. What you wrote was very powerful and without any facts or evidence to back it up.

I would be sad if the OP, who already clearly feels worried about the situation, started taking responsibility for this mess that actually wasn't his doing or responsibility.

I'd be even more sad if he gave up his startup and moved home when it turns out none of the trigger factors for the brothers alcoholism have anything to do with him. Many people just self-destruct and even if the alcoholic brother is missing his distant brother that doesn't make it wrong for distant brother to live abroad.

jacquesm
> So you are essentially shouldering some/all of the responsibility for the brother's alcoholism upon the OP. That's a big burden to carry, and potentially dangerous + damaging if it is not true.

No, I'm asking if he thinks that may be the case.

People do the weirdest things to get the attention of others, including getting in to trouble.

> I would be sad if the OP gave up his startup and moved home for this. Many people just self-destruct and even if the alcoholic brother is missing his distant brother that doesn't make it wrong for distant brother to live abroad.

It's not your life, it's his so there is noting for you to be sad about, whichever decision he makes, and whatever the outcome.

As for the linguistics, I'm not an English native speaker/writer but I though that it was pretty clear that I did not intend to suggest that he is at fault for his brothers drinking, that's a ridiculous suggestion to begin with. Everybody is responsible for their own lives.

troubledbrother
Thanks for your concern. jacquesm's comment did make me pause and think, but I tend to not get carried away when thinking about taking responsibility. I have seen my dad take responsibility for a lot of his relatives' shortcomings all his life; all parties involved end up being miserable. So that history makes me a bit wary of compromising on my life for someone else.

But, I really do want to help my brother, which may involve some compromises.

dman
Maybe ask him to come and visit you where you live. Sometimes a change of scenery and a new place gets people out of a rut. Besides that sadly theres not much you can do. I am from India too and more than one person in my joint family has withered over time due to almost identical circumstances.
troubledbrother
I have thought of doing that, but given that he seemed to be recovering recently and also just started working, I put it off. Also, I'm not sure how much a short visit would help.

I'm sorry to hear about your family; thanks for your help.

dman
I was actually thinking of a slightly prolonged visit. I dont know what he does professionally but maybe he could come here and see if there are startups / companies / univs doing interesting things in his field. I was thinking along the lines of -he comes here, meets some people who are doing interesting stuff in his field, finds a footing and passion for the field and gets some direction - perhaps enrolls in a post grad univ. Sometimes the reason people turn to philosophy books is because they arent finding the intellectual challenge that they crave in their daily life. In India careers can often seem mundane and maybe putting him in contact with people who are close to how he wants to be would solve his anguish and make him feel that good things are possible.
troubledbrother
You're spot on there.

He's a lawyer. In fact, he applied for a masters degree here and got into a couple of decent universities. But we were scared that his drinking would go completely out of control here, where drinking (especially binge drinking) is a lot more common than in India. So, he deferred his plans to come here and work for a while in India.

But perhaps a change of scene is really what he needs.

Mz
There is a book called "The Truth about Addiction and Recovery" that you might find interesting. One of the points it makes is that focusing overly much on the drinking problem tends to make it harder to solve. That resonates with me. My father drank a great deal in his youth, probably to try to drown out memories of his time on the front lines in two wars. He developed a heart problem when I was a little girl, blamed it on the drinking and never drank again. I think part of why that worked is because he was never labeled "an alcoholic" and my mother never made a big issue out of his drinking, in part because he wasn't a mean drunk and there was always enough money.

I think people do things for a reason. I would wonder what the reason was and try to address that in a non-blaming, non-controlling fashion. I think trying to "fix" another human being generally comes across as blaming and controlling and, because of that, tends to be rejected by the intended recipient. You might also consider reading some material by Deepak Chopra concerning the impact of the mind/attitudes/mental framing on health outcomes.

Good luck with this.

startup_ideas
Start a startup that keeps track of alcoholic relatives and that allows to inflict remotely controlled electric shocks using an iPhone app, or by default, with a device that detects alcohol in the vicinity.
spudlyo
While these kind of novelty accounts may be karmic gold mines on Reddit, I don't think you'll find the HN community a willing participant in this game.
earle
You should talk to a specialist about this, not HN.
troubledbrother
Yes, as I mentioned in my post, I do realize that. My intention of posting here is to find out what kind of specialist help others may have gotten. I'm sorry about the irrelevance of the topic on this forum, but I think there are a lot of highly rational and intelligent people here, who tend to give good advice even on personal issues.
dotBen
assuming specialist = therapist/councilor, I doubt they are going to be able to help you work out the solution for your brother, although if you want a neutral and private sounding board to talk the issue through then yes this might be a good course of action.

I've commented many times on HN how much I enjoy seeing a therapist once every two weeks just to rediscover the emotional side of my being and balance out the uber-logicalness of my life.

If you see a therapist do be clear that they are not going to give you the answers, only give you a safe place to talk out the issue. My point is you might be better off doing that with parents, friends, partner (romantic, not business), etc if you have them around you. They know you better and may be more familiar with the specifics of the situation.

EDIT: if you are in SF and want a recommendation, my email is in my profile.

pinneycolton
Alcohol can be a tough addiction to combat. The addict can't be helped unless they want to be helped. I'd reject jacquesm's idea that his drinking is somehow dependent upon your behavior. There's something else going on in his life that he is having a tough time dealing with.

I'd recommend getting him some medical help. I'm unfortunately not familiar with the options that exist in India.

I also think a change of scenery can be helpful, but it's not the cure. It may help him get to a place where he's ready to admit that he needs help, however. Sometimes people need to hit their rock bottom, but other times exposure to healthy patterns can help them along just as well.

I wish you all the luck in the world. My father struggles with alcoholism and I know the effect it can have on the entire family.

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justlearningnow
Hello, I feel your pain. My close one was going through this as well but things are good now. Try to find him an appointment with a specialist. There is also some medication for helping people fight an alcohol addiction - it doesn't cure the reason but helps break the habit. Most of all, be there for him and let him know there's so many reasons he needs to stop doing this and enjoy the beauty of this life. Really make sure he knows that if all goes bad, you'll always be there for him. Take care and I hope all will be well...