Letters From Family & Friends of Meth Addicts

• Jan
  22

  Looking for Help

  My name is Katie, and I am 19 years old. The place I live is surrounded by the negativity and evil that this drug brings. I have two older brothers, one who is 25, and one who is 22. The oldest one just got out of prison after serving five years for possession and manufacturing. My other brother is in prison today, for credit card fraud (to support his habits). My brothers both started out drinking and smoking pot. It wasn't until their late teens that meth reared its ugly head. I don't know too much about how they got into it really. All I do know is how it has affected their lives, and in turn, how it has affected my life.

  I remember the day my brother got caught. I mean he had been in and out of jail for small charges since I was ten. So I was used to it. But I remember calling the jail and they said his bail was a million dollars. Then I found out what he had done. I was astonished. A couple of years after he went to prison, my other brother began using. My parents were oblivious to what was going on, simply because they were in denial. No parent wants to accept that their children are addicted to drugs. When I started learning more about the drug, it explained a lot.

  My brother had this drug dealer living with us in his room. Seeing as how my room is right next to his, I was accustomed to staying up all night. See when you live with tweakers, you are kind of forced to become one yourself. I remember struggling to sleep among their loud voices. I was just a high school student then, trying to do the right thing but I couldn't. I was up all night worried sick. The phone would ring practically all night. My mom started turning her ringer off. People would come in and out of the house all night and all day. There would be horns honking outside, or bright lights shining into my window. Sometimes there would be someone yelling outside, for my brother to come out. Every now and then a fight would break out on my lawn.

  I'd just stay up all night watching these people, and wondering all the time, what could make them do such things. My brother and I used to be close. We did everything together when we were kids. When he started using it was like I didn't exist unless of course he needed to borrow money or needed at favor. That's the other thing about meth it makes you do things that are horrible, and you don't feel bad about it till you're sober and then you just do more to forget about how awful you feel. Ever since I was about 12 years old, I've gotten used to coming home and finding money, stereos, cds, and other stuff missing. My own brothers were stealing from me and my family to support their habits. Now I still don't leave money or anything of value around. I simply don't buy things for myself they only get stolen.

  Like I was saying my brother and I didn't talk much when he was on meth. Sometimes he would get so angry at me and I thought maybe he would get violent. He never got to that point with me, though. It was like I could see the pain in his eyes. I wanted to help him, but he wouldn't let me. My senior year in high school my brother got into a really bad car accident. When they found him he was all doped up on speed and cocaine. He had major brain swelling and was unconscious for about two weeks. I forget how many bones he broke. He ended up getting a huge settlement of about $33,000. To this day he has nothing to show for it. He had just gotten out of jail when he got the settlement so he couldn't even open a bank account. So he had the check written in my name and put the money in my account.

  He spent his money on hotel rooms and tweak. Living a tweakers dream for a couple of months. After eight weeks he had only $10,000 left. That's when I had the money transferred to another account where he couldn't touch it. He then began depositing fraud checks into my bank account and taking money out. After it was all over, he ended up over-drawing my bank account $4000. That was when I had to file a police report on my own brother. He was with this girlfriend for a while after that. She was tweaking too. She had a daughter who was just about two years old. I used to watch her for them when they tweaked. I fell in love with this little girl, and that's when my anger developed towards this drug. How could someone be so selfish as to destroy the life of an innocent, beautiful child? About a month after that he got caught up. Now he's serving a two year sentence.

  My other brother got out last November. He was doing well for a while. He was working concrete and making decent money. He had a car, and he was taking classes here and there. Now here he is, one month away from being off parole, and he's tweaking again. He now hangs around with my brother's ex the one with the baby. Now I am growing even angrier with this drug. The thing is, both of my brothers are extremely intelligent. My oldest brother has an IQ of 150. Yet somehow this drug has taken over their lives.

  My main point is that this drug is extremely powerful. It has affected me in severe ways. I am an angry and untrusting person because of what this drug has done to my family. I love my brothers with all of my heart, and it kills me to watch them do this to themselves. I have lost all motivation to do anything. All I do is worry about them all the time. Still to this day, I have random people parking in my driveway or driving by my house late at night probably looking for tweak. It saddens me and makes me want to help, yet when I have helped in the past it has only blown up in my face. Now I am working on a book about this drug and the effects it has on the people who use it, and the people who it affects as a result.

  When it comes right down to it, you can only help someone so much before they have to help themselves. I've met a lot of people who have quit, I still know a lot of people who use, and everyday my heart is breaking as this drug infests society with its ugliness. I wish I could say that my brothers will be clean someday, but I can only believe that when I see it. To those of you reading this who uses just know that you can either overcome the situation or you can let the situation overcome you. Every person has control over their lives. We can all control every emotion and action within any realm of possibility. No matter how bad things get, we can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them. And at the end of the day we can look at our lives and be thankful that we have them and know that even if we don't do things to better ourselves that we are still alive and that means we still have a chance to do what is right. You can still overcome. Never stop fighting.
  
  Sincerely, Katherine E.L. "Katie"

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  Posted on January 22nd, 2011

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