Hello fellow Losers! This post will by far be the longest I’ve ever made on reddit. I’ll leave a TL;DR here at the top as I really don’t expect anyone to read it all, it’s not all that well written and it’s really long. I just need to get some of this down in writing and clear my chest, mostly for myself, so I can refer to it a bit more if it becomes harder down the line.
TL;DR: Close younger brother has been in a depressed drug-abusing state for the past ten years and I was a depressed binge-eating teenager because I didn’t have the strength to cope with it. Scroll down to the bottom for weight etc.
On to the story, I will first write about all that’s happened and I will comment on myself and my weight at the end. It’s not completely in chronological order but rather I’ve compiled it in a way where connected events go together a bit.
I grew up in the outskirts in a small northern European city, in a good middle class/upper middle class home with good parents. I had two younger brothers, one’s 1.5 years my junior and the other is 7 years younger than me. I also got twin sisters when I was 11. When the older of the my brothers turned 10, he out of the blue told my dad he no longer wanted to live anymore, there weren’t really any signs, from what I can remember he’d been a little more reserved for a week or so before that but nothing out of the normal.
He stopped going to school, he spent the next three months laying in bed all day every day, he wouldn’t come out to eat, my parents would have to bring food to his bed to get him to eat anything at all. At the time I didn’t know he was suicidal and just felt really sad about my brother being depressed. I remember he got home drunk for the first time a year or so later. It wasn’t until a year ago or so he told my parents he’d used both weed and amphetamine about a month before that.
The next few years I took it hard, since we were so close in age and he was so early to start drinking and stuff he’d usually be partying with a lot of my class mates when I was 13-15 and that really made me uninterested in it all since I’d just see him get home pass out drunk all the time. At 14 I was hanging out with my friends and my dad called to tell me if I saw my brother that I was to follow him and call dad because he was on his way to the train tracks to jump. I obviously didn’t feel like hanging out and went home even though it was a holiday we were celebrating. This happened two Saturdays in a row and he was rushed by police to psychiatric care both times. At this time I started playing a lot of computer games and ate a lot of sweets. I had always played a lot and eaten a fair amount of sweets but it got a lot worse at this point and throughout all my teens it just got worse as he got worse.
Looking back, when he stopped going to school and got depressed I went from literally having all answers correct on almost every test to barely passing. I stopped studying and I guess school just reminded me of bad things. I did this and just passed my way all through school.
At the age of 11 he got diagnosed with Bipolar disease. His manic episodes were quite insane, at 12 he hacked credit card accounts with a guy from Algeria he met online and I later got harassed and threatened by that guy when he couldn’t get in touch with my brother. My brother ordered computer components to be able to sell them for drugs. My parents found out and went to the police but they said they couldn’t do anything if the victims didn’t report it (the accounts they hacked were all French (not our country), we don’t know who and nobody reported it). From 15 and forward he was smoking weed all the time, he was literally high for 24 hours per day. My parents did what they could but there wasn’t much that they could do, you can’t keep an eye on someone for 24 hours per day.
It’s hard to explain but I never really realized I was depressed. I guess I just fled to computer games and I never really confronted my feelings. I always felt like a victim and having much the same friends as him as he hung out with some of my class mates from time to time I always felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it so it felt like he went about his life and I was to keep quiet not as to expose all his problems (most of them hung out with him when he wasn’t high in our lower teens so they didn’t really know). When I was going apply to university something happened with my brother the day I was going apply for a test I needed to do before going and I missed it which is when it all came crashing down at me and I felt suicidal myself for the first (and luckily only) time. I told my parents and I made sure I got to talk to a therapist. I was given anti-depressants and they helped a bit, although most of what helped I feel was due to me getting that shock of feeling suicidal and deciding I needed to process it all as well as the support from my parents. I worked through it and I stopped taking my medications a year or so ago because at that point I was feeling well and I felt that the pills made me hazy and I couldn’t think clearly so I was a bit numb in social situations which made me feel slow and stupid like I couldn’t keep up.
At 17 it got worse and he started doing a lot more, he was doing a lot of synthetic cannabinoids, at a time where there were a lot of reports of people dying from them because they were poorly made. They were cheaper than weed and being 17 with no income, wanting to be high 24 hours per day as to not feel so sad, they were what he could get most of the time. We found out later he made his own synthetic cannabinoids and sold some to support his addiction. In the fall when he was 17 he got an epileptic chock when talking to a common friend of ours (most likely caused by the drugs). Some lady who were out running followed them and knocked on the door when he came home and told my parents about it so they went to the hospital. At this point social services was already looking for a rehab place for him and now my parents put pressure on them and he got a place. They drove him there (5 hours away from where I live) the same day I had an exam in university which I failed.
At this point I started binge eating sweets again. I am sad to say I’m not even exaggerating when I say I ate 1.5-3lbs of candy/chips every day and drank exclusively soda. I gained a lot of weight in the two-three months following and then I managed to chill down.
He was away for 4-5 months (moved to a place closer to us after about 2-3 months). He broke his foot just a week or two before he came home. A day or two after coming home, he walked a mile to the store (with a broken foot) to get the drugs he’d ordered the same day he came home. That month was horrible, I was constantly out looking for him with my parents because he’d leave to do drugs. I had quit university at this point partly because I wasn’t into what I studied but also partly because of all the shit that went down.
He got a place at a great rehab a month after getting home and he lived there for 9-12 months before getting an apartment to be phased out back into society. This rehab and the apartment were in a city about 6 hours away which was great as he could get away from old friends and stuff. Anyhow, after a few months there he got another similar apartment in our city to be closer to family and to build a proper life back up here. This was about a year ago. He has since been doing well, he finished school (9th grade) at the last rehab place and he started studying the upper secondary school equivalent at a special school in the fall of 2016.
This winter I moved to a city 30 miles from my home town because I’ve been studying here since the fall. I went back home this last Friday and when I got off the train my mom picked me up. She gets a call and I overheard her talking to my brothers sponsor from that rehab place. My brother had relapsed and called my parents so my dad was at his place with him. He had also called his sponsor to tell him he wanted to come back there to get cleaned up and he told my parents he wanted to go to the psychiatric hospital’s ER for the weekend until they could get him to a rehab or something. My mother was sorry that I got to overhear that before she had the chance to tell me. She also told me he’d had a relapse and smoked heroin a few days after new years but gotten himself back on track right away. He told my parents about that a month ago. I told her I’d rather they’d tell me about this right when they knew it, that way I wouldn’t get all this information at once but I could be informed that he’d smoked heroin and was clean again and I could be a little more prepared that he might relapse .I never really got to know much about what happened during my teens as my parents wanted to protect me but I started to feel like that just created anxiety for me as I didn’t know what to expect, if he’d commit suicide or if he was just doing weed or what.
Anyway, when we got home my dad called and told us they were going to the hospital, he’d taken some benzo and more before calling my dad. He’d also taken some drugs in some way I don’t know the name of but they basically put the drugs in some small paper-ish thing and then that dissolves slowly and creates a new high later. One of them kicked in while my dad was there and he was completely gone. He was at the hospital from 5 pm Friday and he was out of it until 1am (some drugs had worn off so he could at least talk). He had bad values when they tested him, his heart was particularly bad. My dad went home around 3am and I got home from a friend of mine at the same time. He went to bed at 3:30, when I woke up the next day my dad was away, which I expected since he was to go back to the hospital when he woke up. When I got in contact with them he told me mom had come home at 5, my brother had left the hospital. Since he’s over 18 they cannot force him to be there. He even told them he’d go home and do more drugs and they couldn’t do anything. Mom went home and she and dad went to his place and he wasn’t there. They went out and looked for him and later came back to his place and found him. He had taken more drugs, benzo, tramadol, amphetamine and a bunch of synthetic internet drugs. The internet drugs are shit because the doctors can’t give him anything when he’s at the hospital since they don’t know what’s in the stuff he’s taken and don’t know how they may mix. They sat with him and a few hours later he woke up and sent them home. They had to leave as to not cause to much of a scene and they got back a few hours later and stayed with him to keep an eye on him.
I’ve gained my weight slowly throughout all my teens, I have had some periods worse than others and for the first few years I kind of just denied it. I was always thin as a child even if I ate a lot of candy. When I got to 97kg/214lbs I decided I wouldn’t see triple digits which of course I did.
I started to feel really depressed this weekend. Last year I had a candy free year to try and do something and I lost 9kg/20lbs down to 118kg/260lbs from 127kg/280lbs, most of it in a few weeks during the spring, I still eat large portions of food and that’s been another of my problem. This weekend however I bought candy and chips for the first time in over a year. This Sunday as I got home from my parents I felt so down. When I came home I bout candy, I’ve eaten 3-4lbs of candy in 2 days. My parents called on Monday and told me social services had agreed to pay for his stay at that rehab again and my parents drove the 13 hour round trip there with him and got home at 4am. Yesterday I talked to them and they said it went surprisingly well and he met a few familiar faces there as well.
Today I decided I’m not going to do what I did through my teens. I’m going to accept responsibility for my weight and my happiness. I’m going to be there for my brother for whatever he needs but I need to separate his life from mine because even if he gets clean again now. Today marks the day where I go from being an antisocial obese sad person with a victim cape to a person that takes responisibility and is happy for the sheer fact that I have a life with great family and friends and instead of going around anxious if he’s going to some time in the future relapse and overdose or die I will take every day as it comes and deal with them when it happens.
That’s my story, it got a lot longer than I expected it to. I’m not looking for sympathy in this thread. I have decided to channel this into something good this time instead of something bad. I am more motivated than ever to do good in university and to lose this weight and live the life I want. I needed to write this all down for myself and as I was creating this thread I felt I may as well put it in here, if you resonate with it you do and if you don’t you don’t. I also feel it’s good to show that this type of stuff can happen in any family. As I said in the beginning, we grew up in a family that always had food on the table, we went on vacations and our parents are amazing. I am amazingly grateful for my parents, they have been so great through all of this. I don’t know if my brother would be alive today, let alone me if it hadn’t been for them.
My goal is to be healthy, I have put down 84kg/185lbs but would probably want a few kg lower than that. I do however not care for now, my only goal is to be a better, more motivated and happy individual every god damn day. As long as I can do that and as long as I move in the right direction weight-wise I am going to be content. I don’t care how fast or slow it goes as long as it goes. I will update you guys later, preferably with a shorter post that time!
I am on a student budget and while I like cooking good food on the weekend or so most meals are eaten in school or on weeknights so I will stick to easy stuff like pasta and chicken salads or veggies and rice with chicken. I will have Saturdays for cheat days but I will keep the cheating to be a nice dinner and/or some ice cream, no candy/chips. I’m going to start going to the gym soon but for the next week or two I’m just going to focus on school and eating well.
Thanks for reading (even if you only read the TL;DR ;) ). Have a great fucking day and go out there and lose it!
Submitted February 28, 2017 at 10:02PM by MaximumChange http://ift.tt/2l9LJEk
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