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Should I Tell Very Sick Brother About Past Addiction- HELP

S

SawRED

Greenlighter
Joined
May 16, 2011
Messages
46
So I will try and make this long story as short as possible. My brother and his fiance have always been the people i trusted and cared most about, in fact they in many ways are really who raised me to become who I am today. Although we have always been very close and have bonded through struggles within our family and lives a little while back a new challenge arose.

After years of wondering why my childhood seemed quite different from theres we found out my father was addicted to cocaine for the past few years. Us all having been out of the house this was not a huge deal but it certainly effected us and from there on out we decided that we would be our own model of a perfect family. The biggest thing they really believed in was complete trust and honesty. The concept that you shouldn't lie to to someone in order to "protect" them because in the end it will only hurt more. They believed anything that happened we could get through together as a family.

However at the time we found this out I had just begun a downward spiral into drugs although at the time I had no idea what was to come and was struggling more with depression then drug abuse. Anyways you would think me being smart I would have just admitted right then and there the issues i was having but instead i did the opposite. They had always been there for me so much that I always felt the only way I could repay them was by being the strength we needed and by showing that you can be strong throughout all the struggles. But on the inside I was dying and things only got worse. As things got worse it continued to be a downward spiral. They had done so much for me that I couldn't bare to disappoint them (even though I knew they would be there for me) and as i got worse it was almost as if the hiding and secrecy was just growing bigger and bigger and becoming harder and harder to admit to.

Anyways after a while of battling all my demons I was lucky to get through my issues and get clean alone. Since then while I have occasionally struggled a little bit I have been for the most part clean and reasonably happy as well. Funny enough I always imagined when I was clean and happy it'd be so easy to admit to my past struggles but instead it has become harder. As I see myself happy and clean now it's so hard to tell people because i am not that person anymore. None the less that time of my life defined who I am as a person, and having no one know especially the people closest to me makes me feel like no one really understands who I am.

All in all this was something that bothered me a little bit but has only recently become a huge issue in my life. Unfortunately not long ago my brother was diagnosed with a very very serious cancer that almost nobody has ever survived. In so many ways I want to tell him and his fiance now what I have been through before it may be too late. I can't stand the thought of them never knowing who i really was and what I have been through. But at the same time I feel this maybe out of selfish motivation. They are struggling so much and dealing with so much I have no idea how to add this to there issue. I don't want them to worry about me relapsing or thinking that his illness could be a trigger for my drug use. None the less I know how strongly they feel about not lying to protect them but this situation just seems like such a different ball game then anything else. I really can't decide what to do and whether or not i should tell them. I don't want too hurt them anymore then they are already hurting but at the same time it's so hard to have them not know and I also feel as though I am not as there for them as I should be because I feel so misunderstood.

Well sorry for the long read it ended up being more then I thought but any help or advice would be appreciated. Do you think I should just tell them? Or do you think I need to just hold my secrets to protect them? Another thing I was thinking of was maybe just telling his fiance and seeing what she thought?
 
No, not now. They need you to be strong for them, not they other way around. It's in the past now. You'll have an opportunity in the future to talk about it with your brother. As an aside, why did you wait until now?
 
The issue is there may not be a future. His cancer is very rare so they have no idea how new treatments will help but in the past the prognosis has been 7-8months. And wait til now for what?
 
Sawred, i would question your motives further before you commit to anything that can't be undone. Clearly what you see as deception is a burden for you, and your brother's illness has brought things to a head. Question I would ask is why did you decide not to tell him earlier, before you knew he was sick? You must have decided in some way that he didn't need to know, or you weren't ready to tell him anyways? If your reasons for not telling him before were sound, are they any less sound now he's sick? Would unburdening yourself to your brother bring something positive to your relationship that isn't already there, or couldn't be brought into it in a different way in the time you have left together, however long that is, or could it possibly have very negative consequences for him, you, or your wider family as a whole at a time when they are least able to deal with them, or have more pressing things to think about? These are questions only you can answer, and until you have them I would just hang fire a while yet.
 
Well thats the thing there is both good and bad. By telling him I think it explains a lot about me in terms of something that may benefit him. Certain things that have happened and things that I have done can be seen a lot differently if they knew how unhappy I was and how hard I was struggling with addiction. At the same time like I said before part of it is selfish. I gain the peace of mind knowing that they know who I really am. But the biggest issue is that I feel like it's interfering with me being there for him and his fiance. Like they ask me how I feel and I say im doing fine because I can't really explain what I'm going through without them understanding my past. At first I thought this would be helpful and I can be strong for them but as time goes on I feel like it just makes me seem distant or as though im in denial or something.

Before all this happened I felt like I was the one who was the most helpful to them when something went wrong, but lately I feel like I've just been this absent void. Its like there looking for me to share my emotions and go through this with them, but really I feel like Im going through it alone and they can tell.
 
OK, so it's mostly about you feeling better, in that you think he might understand you better if you could shed some new light on ways you've behaved or things you have done in the past. And maybe they could help you better if they understood you better with the things you're going through right now? Not seeing much in the way of positives for them yet?

I understand the bit about how you're feeling as though you're holding back because you feel like you're having to keep a part of yourself hidden, but are you sure that's not just you holding back and feeling some kind of emotional distance because you haven't come to terms with your brother's illness yet, and the uncertainties of it, and so are quite naturally in a state of some emotional flux yourself?
 
Sepher, the problem is that I should have told him before he was sick. Me and my brother are extremely close, part of the time I was going through this I was living with him cause I had no where to go. The only reason I didn't tell him before was basically because I was scared and I didn't want to hurt them. We had just gone through the issue of my fathers addiction where he lied about it for so long and although I should've told them right then (at the time i wasn't really as into drugs i was just more depressed) i didn't, and as the lie got bigger I grew more and more scared to disappoint them. Also just like now they were dealing with a lot and I didn't want to add more to the burden. But they were never upset with my dad for being an addict just for the lying and etc and so we all basically made a pact not to lie to each other to protect each other but thats exactly what I was doing. As time goes on it just seemed like what I was doing was getting worse and worse and became harder to admit to. I should add a sidenote though that i keep saying I was scared to disappoint them, but in reality they wouldn't have been disappointed they would have just been there for me and helped me out. But when you grow up looking up to someone so much like a younger brother does to an older brother, they become your hero and i think it was more about trying to impress them, then not disappointing them.

The whole time I was addicted i wanted to tell them I just couldn't and anytime I thought about just doing it, it was much easier to just get high and not care. Anyways after I got clean I had always planned on telling them but it just wasn't an urgent issue. Like I said earlier it bothered me a little bit that they didn't know and I wanted to tell them, but all in all life was good and I didn't feel the need to change anything at that point.

It just sucks I know my brother would want me to tell him no matter what the circumstances are, but now I just don't know if I should put that weight on him. I just keep going back and forth because I know this can only make things harder, but HES the one who always made me to promise Id tell him everything even if itd hurt him. And also like i said before I worry my ability to be there for him is suffering because I have this big secret thats making us less close then we could be
 
Sepher said:
OK, so it's mostly about you feeling better, in that you think he might understand you better if you could shed some new light on ways you've behaved or things you have done in the past. And maybe they could help you better if they understood you better with the things you're going through right now? Not seeing much in the way of positives for them yet?

I understand the bit about how you're feeling as though you're holding back because you feel like you're having to keep a part of yourself hidden, but are you sure that's not just you holding back and feeling some kind of emotional distance because you haven't come to terms with your brother's illness yet, and the uncertainties of it, and so are quite naturally in a state of some emotional flux yourself?
Click to expand...

I think what you said is a small part of it but definitely not the main issue. The issue is that I feel like I can't open up to tell them how I feel cause so many of my emotions and what I'm going through with this relate back to my addiction. So the way I respond to this is by acting like I'm fine and am "being strong" but I know that they can tell that I'm more distant. And I feel like they need me to be close to them but I can't without explaining what I'm going through.

For example all things considered I feel like I'm handling it pretty well but there are things I am struggling with. I got over my addiction by coming to terms with the things I was struggling with and moving on and not letting them make me depressed. However, now that this has happened I feel like I don't know how to be sad. I know how to be addicted and I know how to be happy but neither of those things are the right things to be feeling right now. And I know that telling them that would not just help me but help them cause they could understand how I feel, but that would obviously involve first telling them the whole story of my addiction which could also add stress to their lives.
 
No i don't and have never been in AA or NA. It's hard to explain the issue without a better understanding of me and my brothers relationship and i don't know how to describe it. But my biggest issue is that I know that he would want me to tell him like we've been through situations like this and basically agreed we'd tell each other everything. I think it's more me being selfish not telling him (which would be in a lot of ways easier for me) because I don't want to be the cause of suffering to him. But i definitely don't deny there is a part of me that selfishly wants to tell him because I can't stand the idea of him never knowing this big part of me.
 
I would say let sleeping dogs lie. From what you posted you are a better person now. You learned something from your struggles and you should be proud of that. There is no need to open up that pandoras box now. God forbid your brother does die... let him go at peace with the world and not worried about whether you might relapse or something. There are things that are sometime better left unsaid. All your brother needs to know now is that you love him and that you would never do anything intentionally to hurt him or his wife.

I understand you want to tell them to make yourself feel better. But its not just that I understand. You want to hold on to an agreement you had between the two of you. An agreement you both hold dear. Forgive me for being so blunt but do you really want your brothers dying thought to be that his brother betrayed his trust when that is the last thing you wanted to do? Ask yourself this question and be honest to yourself.

Your intentions for keeping your secret were noble there is no denying that. Misguided perhaps but noble nonetheless. So continue doing the noble thing. Suffer in silence if you must. We all pay a price for our addictions, maybe this is yours. Sometimes doing the right thing hurts and hurts a lot believe me I know. Take the high and honorable path. It will be hard but in the end worth it. "For the path is difficult to cross like the sharpened edge of a razor, so say the wise."

But in the end I cannot tell you what to do. You know your brother I don't. Only you can make this decision.

Good luck.
 
Why did you choose not to tell your brother until now?

Also, these are the exact issues that 12-Step fellowships help addicts navigate so you might
want to check it out.
 
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