Op was my little brother and I found his body from an OD the November after he posted this thread. Thank you for the kind words and condolences you all offered him. I think Cole's death took a big toll on his mental health that contributed to his spiral that resulted in the OD. Three weeks before he passed, we had also lost our grandmother. I think that spiraled him most of all.
For 4 years before his passing, I begged and pleaded with my family to intervene and do something. Not only did they not do that, they would often get angry with me for even suggesting that he had a problem and needed help. In the immediate aftermath of his death, my family turned on me and I no longer have a relationship with any of them. We were born into a family of scumfucks who have the "every man for himself" mentality. Not the mentality of being there for each other, like family. Our sister is pretty wealthy, and she knew of our brother's addiction problems and she stood on the sidelines and refused to do anything. While she was paying for luxury vacations and flying around the world and buying luxury goods and million dollar homes, our brother was on death's door from fentanyl addiction, unable to get medication or addiction treatment. I know that what you have all said is basically true, that there is no helping an addict until they are ready to do so. In the aftermath of his death, when collecting his things, I found some paperwork where he had applied for addiction treatment and methadone - he was denied both. He was ready to get clean and quit. He knew he was in a bad spot. He was my "full" brother and she is "only" our "half" sister. So maybe she just didn't care. It certainly seems that way.
In the couple of years before he passed, my brother traveled around the world to a variety of spots - Hong Kong during the protests, Thailand, Jerusalem where he went over into Lebanon and Jordan to visit some historical sites. While he was in Hong Kong, he passed out a survey to gather data on the opinions of Hong Kongers re: the protests. He was in the process of writing a book summarizing his experience there and the data he gathered. Unfortunately he was only 50 pages in before he passed, so its not something that I can finish for him. He was a UCLA graduate and was in law school. Keep that in mind whenever you want to look down your nose at addicts (the proverbial you not you the posters I'm quoting).
He was a kid with a huge heart and a huge brain. We were simply born into the wrong family. Raised by a single father with extreme PTSD and anger problems from being wounded in Vietnam. Both parents extremely mentally ill. We were moved all over the country as kids. Never had stable roots anywhere. We both endured a tremendous amount of trauma in our upbringing, which was the primary driver of his addiction issues.
Hold your loved ones close and don't give up on them sherbros. He was my only brother and "full blood" sibling and I will never get to see or hold him again.
I don't know why but reading this post made me cry. It was a reminder of how kind my brother was to people, to a fault really. Thank you.
We are some of the most anglo looking fuckers around. We must come from the same gene pool as Frank Mir, Tom Aspinall, Weidman and Shia LeBeouf. We have very similar phenotypes.
