Steve, im so sorry you are going through all of this. Have you tried Al-Anon meetings? In many ways that seems like it may be more suited to this situation? I say that, although ive realized i think the Al-Anon 'experts'have convinced my family that i am still doing drugs because i quit on my own. I got a Christmas card mentioning a new baby born 4 months ago, which they 'forgot' to tell me about....in many ways your anger is still from caring, which is something my sobriety lost...my favorite thing about being on drugs was not caring about being ostracized by my family....
I hope you can find peace in that you have a family & a life without needing to numb yourself. I hope that doesnt sound sarcastic. Please get some guidance for yourself & try to shift things. You have reason for feeling this upset, but that may not be the best thing for change. ~♡~

Seeking counseling for yourself is a fantastic plan.
If this counselor is not available to help you please ask them to refer you to someone who can.

Good Luck 🙂

I did the original post several days ago and didn't look it over before I posted replies. Sorry for repeating some things in them.

I am going to be seeking help for myself from our mother's hospice spiritual counselor. We've already met a few times in the past and he knows some things about the situation. I want to see if I can start meeting him to get all this out.

What I have to get out doesn't have to do with my brother alone. It is also our mother. When she was alive they lived together in the house. He held the hoard at bay for her, but it was a very ugly atmosphere of drugs for him, booze for her, and hatred for anyone they didn't like. Now I loved my mother dearly, but she had a temper that would come when she drank. She never got drunk. She would drink this heavily diluted vodka mix. But it was just enough to get her angry every day.

She hated with a passion any of our ex's. I had an ex and forgave her during the divorce and recreived healing from everything after just a few months. My mother hated my ex for years, and it wasn't even her marriage! She hated the ex wife and girlfriends of my brother, especially the wife. Their marriage blew up because of drugs, but she could never face that. It got so bad my mother attempted to force me to write a letter to her parents revealing an abortion she had years before, saying I should do it to prove I was with the family. I stayed neutral on the whole conflict and refused to do the letter, which they wanted me to type because I have good literary and grammar skills. Turns out the abortion was of an already dead baby. They got someone else to do the letter. It was all a naked plot of ugly revenge that was a blot on our family history.

I'm not saying there haven't been good moments the past 11 years, but the negatives have always been what I've been saying,

So, so sick of it all.

I know I probably sound cynical. Maybe some people on this board who are hoarders might even be glad they don't have me as a brother.

But I hope everyone realizes the level of pain I am feeling. Years ago I had to inform an ex girlfriend of his that he had a crack addiction because she just gave birth to their son and he was preparing to go around with the baby in his SUV high on crack. I protected his own son's life, doing something I was very uncomfortable doing, knowing full well no one else would do it. To this day, although it's not talked about, I know he resents me for that. He is so twisted in his thinking that he looks at it as merely interfering with what he wanted, not with what was dangerous for the baby.

I've been in the passenger seat with him as the driver. He has always been dangerous, even before all this happened. Once a few years ago I had to go a long way with him. He was angry for some reason I don't remember when we left. He clipped the sidewalk on my side and screamed bloody murder at a driver who was just making a normal turn onto our street.

On another occasion we were going to a baseball stadium and he hadn't had enough sleep. He started dozing off at the wheel on the freeway, then his body jolted him out each time. But it jolted him into a violent temper, with him screaming.

Then he had alcohol at the game. At the end I put my foot down and said I was not leaving with him unless I was driving. The stadium was a long way from home so he wade boxed into a corner and he did not like it one bit. Of course we were nearly out of gas. This is a habit of his I have never understood. He likes to drive on empty. He began to complain that he could not feel the pedal to determine if we needed to get gas!!! You could cut the tension with a knife.

He once put strange anti-Semitic writing under a fancy table at his former home in another state, where his ex still resides. It was revenge of some bizarre sort against her, since Jewish friends gave them the table.

He once wrote a message to himself on a fogged mirror at our house, saying how great looking he was. That would not have been so bizarre if it weren't for the fact that HE ANSWERED HIMSELF BY WRITING THANK YOU.

I can't take it anymore. I just can't.

Thanks to all who have responded.

I'm not trying to change him. I abandoned that long ago. Where the line gets blurred is the fact that he is hoarding our childhood home. You see, I'm just supposed to suck up and take that. Even though I own half the house and spent more years living in it than he did, he is living in it now so he thinks he and every right to destroy it.

Of course he does! Gee, how stupid of me. I of course have no rights whatsoever as far as the house is concerned. Never mind the fact that he would be dead or sipping liquid food through a straw for the rest of his life were it not for the fact that I hid a set of bullets the very day before he went for the gun, all because he owed a drug dealer money. He was prepared to blow himself away years ago, and when I reminded him of that in an argument years later, he said "Maybe the bullets were meant for you."

No "Thank you for saving my life.", no "I'm glad you took those bullets away, else I would have done something really stupid." No, all I've ever gotten was a staterment saying he might have thought of killing me instead.

No, from that and a whole lot of other things covering 11 years he doesn't owe me anything at all. How silly of me to think the fact that he breathes without assistance today because of something I did could be cause for me to think I can request him to clean up the house.

Oh, and did I mention we have a legal agreement he signed that erequires him to clean up the house, and he is just flaunting and ignoring it?

I hope I don't sound too angry here. In reality I don't talk this way usually to him. But 43 vile text messages in one shot. Aftet that I am DONE.

Hi Steve 🙂
There comes a point in our lives when we MUST do what is best for us.
Nobody else knows the whole story like you do and nobody else besides you can make these decisions.
I know it is hard, I have been through this too with a heroin addict.
Many people told me I was wrong but I did what I had to do for my own health and sanity.
Take care of yourself and be confident in your decisions to do so.
Best wishes, Tillie

Steve, my heart goes out to you. I know several people who've dealt with serious mental illness and/or addiction of a family member. It ravages lives. It sounds like you have tried a lot of things and I will definitely be praying for you and for your brother that some kind of miracle and permanent help can be found.

I don't know whether or not forceful solutions work. From what I've heard they don't work very well with hoarders anyway. I know when I was still very defensive about my hoarding I would've resisted pretty strongly. Re other addictions I've heard some people do OK in the rehabs or AA and others actually do better on their own. But with mental illness in there it is so much more complicated.

So I don't pretend to have answers but just want to welcome you to the board - some great people here who will be glad to share their insights and understanding and help you not feel alone.

Wow? Steve, i am so sorry youre going through all of this. I was a meth addict for 11 years, myself. I wasnt a typical one, in that i never lied, cheated, scammed, stole, etc., but thank God my family did not go control freak on me with cops or institutions cuz id be a true mess now. I quit when i was ready. Im not saying im typical at all. Most ex-addicts to well in AA & rehab, but i would not have. I did it on my own. Actually, i originally went on drugs to emotionally survive severe losses that piled up in just a few months. Everyone i loved died or left.
Is there any way you can just go about your life without trying to change him? It doesnt mean you dont care about him? In some ways not having an adversary can stop a certain dynamic, causing the addict to face themself more?