A Sibling’s View On Addiction

My sister and I were the best of friends growing up. She set the standard for me for a best friend and a big sister. Being only 16 months apart, we shared some of the same friends and people thought we were always asking if we were twins, except she was the angel and I was the devil. As time went on we began to find our own niches in school and sports. She was two grade levels above me so when I would move up to a new school she would move up to a new school. Finally, when I was a freshman in high school she was a junior and we went to school together. I got good grades, she didn’t. I played volleyball, she cheered. I would have movie night sleepovers with my best friends, she would get caught partying and sneaking out. We were complete opposites.

During my senior year of high school she got a new boyfriend. They spent every living second together (I’m not exaggerating either). They might as well have been joined at the hip. We never got to hang out because they were always together or she’d already have plans with her friends. But she was happy, so I was happy for her.October of my freshman year of college, my sister and her boyfriend broke up. And she was a mess. I kept trying to ask what had happened and she wouldn’t tell me, or she’d make up some lame excuse. So I began to not care. We seemed to always fight when we would see each other when I came home from school and we didn’t get along as well as we did when we were younger. I would expect that though, we weren’t kids anymore. We had our own responsibilities and social lives. It was a good thing that I lived with my best friends at college because my first best friend had slowly slipped away. My sister and I talked when we talked, and that became the norm.

Finding Out About The Addiction

I can remember the day like it was yesterday that I found out that my sister was an addict. I had just gotten home from Spring break and my best friend and I were dropped off at my house. My friend and I wanted to get something to eat and my mom says, “No let’s take her home, we can get something later”. She said it in the strangest tone and I knew that I was mad that we couldn’t get food, but I didn’t push the matter because my mom seemed kind of off. We dropped my friend off and said goodbye and then my mom and I were on our way home. We turned the corner off of my friend’s street and my mom looks at me with tears in her eyes and says, “I have something to tell you” and I asked what she needed to tell me and she says, “your sister is in rehab right now for drugs”. Boom. My jaw dropped and my face couldn’t hide the confusion. Drugs? Who uses drugs? No one that I knew. I didn’t have much emotion to the news because I was a little in shock, but mostly disbelief. When my mom and I get home she began to tell me how they busted my sister. Little did any of us know that for the past couple of years my sister had chose a destructive lifestyle for herself before, during, and after her relationship with her boyfriend, and she was fairly good at hiding it until she spun out of control at the end. My mom told me how she was an alcoholic, opiate user, and only God knows what else. She had affected everyone in her life by stealing and lying. I just didn’t understand. Where had my sister gone? I leave for college for not even a full year and the sister I left behind doesn’t exist anymore? How is that even possible?

For a very long time I blamed my sister and I was mad at her. I didn’t understand any of it. Why would she even want to try drugs? Did she even stop to consider the small side effect of her addiction called death? Why would she put herself in those shoes knowing that it would affect our whole family? She was selfish and she turned into a tornado that destroyed everything in her path. My mom tried for a long time to educate me on addiction and constantly tell me that my sister was “sick”, but I didn’t care because I didn’t care to understand.

Coming To Terms And Understanding Her Addiction

Addiction. If you would have asked me to define that word three years I would give you two words: a choice. People choose to use drugs, which means they choose to get addicted, which means they choose the way they want to live their life. WRONG. I now know that addiction is not in the least a choice, but in fact a disease. Having an addict in the family is not easy. What is their mental state? Are they strong enough to resist the urge to use again? What happens if/when they relapse? What if they don’t want to stay sober? These repeating thoughts can drive a person crazy. I’m not going to lie, there are still things I question and I don’t understand, and I don’t know if I ever will, but if you make an effort to be supportive and at least TRY to understand the disease you are already half way there.

Thankfully my sister has been sober for almost two years now. She is a brand new person and she is able to look back on the person she became through addiction and decide that she never wants to be that person again. I’m not saying that the past 3.5 years haven’t been crazy, full of emotions, road bumps and changes of course, but there WAS a light at the end of the tunnel. She found it and she came out sprinting. Today, I am proud of my sister and everything that she has achieved. I know it’s not an easy fight, but the mere that fact she chose to fight instead of her defeat is what I’m most proud of. As she continues to grow and overcome struggles that follow recovery, she will always know that she has her family and her first best friend ready to fight with her by her side.