Dear NightFlower:

You wrote that your brother blames his addiction “on his depression and anxiety’-

Do you believe that he did get into opioids for the purpose of relieving his depression and anxiety, that his depression and anxiety were so severe that he needed relief?

anita

Dear  NightFlower:

First thing to do is to make sure he has no access to your car or to any family car so that he doesn’t endanger lives driving under the influence or under great anxiety/ panic while withdrawing (in between using or attempting to withdraw altogether).

Second, do all you can do to protect yourself and other people best you can from any other damaging  results of his using drugs.

Otherwise, notice that you wrote in your original post that you “try my best to be there for him always without judgement …. I tell him I’m always here for him and the family loves and cares for him deeply”-

But you are with judgement. You believe he has a victim mentality, that is, that he is not a real  victim and that he was “babied his whole life”. My comment is that he must have been babied in abusive ways. And he was a victim. Children are not born with a victim mentality, they are truly victimized, in many, many households.

Better you express to him your true feelings, including the anger you have, understandably, toward him. If you tell him that you have no judgment toward him, that is not true. He needs the truth.

He is in big trouble. Opioid addiction is very difficult to undo. The anxiety and panic that results from withdrawing is more intense than the anxiety leading to using the drugs. Withdrawal starts happening anytime he has gone too long between the last use and the next.

Withdrawal has to be supervised by a responsible medical doctor, to be done gradually, very gradually while incorporating calming practices to help endure the unavoidable withdrawal symptoms, the anxiety involved in withdrawing. That takes a strong motivation, on the part of the person doing the long term withdrawing.

It will help him to have people in his life who truly understand the difficulties in withdrawing and who truly do not judge him. Perhaps a 12 step program like Narcotics Anonymous (U.S)?

anita