Sometimes one wonders how one can push someone that one loves into despair and desperation, how can one not consider what is in the best interest of those that one loves.  Yes, alcoholism is definitely a disease but how does a person himself accept such reality.  Drink is controlling your life but not you.  There are many people with the same condition; this disease treats many people along with their families terribly.  But one thing I don‘t understand is why it‘s not possible to get treatment when things get so bad, there is a cure for it, which is not so for many other incurable diseases.

I have often been rather angry and annoyed with my brother-in –law for being an alcoholic; of course he has never admitted it and would never put himself in that group of people.  My wonderful sister is 3 years older than me and I can, in no way understand how she can have lived the life she‘s lived for so many years.  They‘ve been together for 20 years, they have 3 great children. When they met they were so much in love and as I was just a teenager I didn‘t really understand the complexities of life.  As time passed I started to notice that he enjoyed his drink, they started a family early on in their relationship, he is to say 6 years older than her and should be, supposedly more mature.  At first they lived with my parents then a little time after their first child they started living together.  It was always a struggle for them, she worked as much as she could and he worked mostly here and there whilst on the dole between jobs, rather too much time spent on the dole actually.  He had the habit of quitting his normal work in order to accept better paid, temporary work, this only seemed to last 3 months a year and in between times he was on unemployment benefit.

I found it to be unbelievably annoying, as they had a family, were always struggling and he should have had a steady job.  But, then he drank every weekend so a lot of their money went on that.  They had more children and I could never understand why nothing ever changed, why didn‘t my sister put her foot down and demand that he go into therapy, my opinion of alcoholics was:  it is not a disease, I can‘t stand it when people talked about it being an ailment, I thought you should be able to quit drinking in the same way you could quit smoking, you just needed will power but no, that‘s not correct and today I‘ve begun to accept that it is a disease and people need help but the help will only work if you yourself want to stop and are really ready to stop.  The only thing I could do through all this was to be available for my sister when she needed me, unfortunately we weren‘t especially close, we had never particularly got on well together but nevertheless we love each other a lot.  We get on better today than in the past but we‘re still not very good at calling each other to discuss our issues.  However, I‘ve let her know that I will always be there for her no matter what, she knows that I can‘t abide all the trouble around him and I think he is ruining her life.  Not only that but he verbally abuses my sister, talking down to her quite a lot at times, I can get extremely annoyed and tired at how she can let him treat her so, but he does it because she allows him to get away with it, he actually has not self-esteem.  All this makes it impossible for me to like him, I get annoyed if I smell alcohol on him from the night before when I turn up to their child‘s birthday party, I don‘t say anything because I want to keep the peace for the sake of the child‘s birthday.  The children are also more than just a little tired of his behavior, the boy really can‘t stand his father and that is not a good thing.  They don‘t let their feelings show, they keep them all locked inside themselves.

Two years ago they got a big shock, my sister was overtired, totally exhausted, just before xmas she was so annoyed with him and felt so bad that she fainted.  It happened at 1 am, the oldest daughter rang the emergency services and requested an ambulance.  She was taken to the hospital and didn‘t regain consciousness until she got there, the ambulance men didn‘t think very much of the situation, they thought that there had been abuse so got in touch with child services, who came and took the children out of the home and moved them into another abode, they didn‘t know what was happening and were scared for their mother.  Their grandmother and grandfather both lived in the area, child services could have taken them there.  The children were forcefully taken out of their home, the oldest, extremely angry was kicking all over trying to get free but they were still taken away.  When my sister regained consciousness and was discharged she wanted to know where her children were.  She was given no explanation and was told to get in touch with them in the morning.  What kind of work ethic is that, of course she should have had the situation explained to her instead of just letting her wait in anguish and stress, of course she couldn‘t sleep, exactly the one thing she really needed.

She rushed to our parents and waited until morning to get in touch with child services, she was offered a meeting at lunchtime to discuss her situation.  I had already been contacted ( I live in a different community to them ) and I got to hear what was decided at the meeting.  Violence in the home and drink were discussed and it was decided that the home was an unsuitable place to raise children, so it was that a decision was made to remove the children until the situation changed.  They were not told where the children were or even if they were together.  I thought it ridiculous and we got in touch with the child services in our own area and asked them to work with us.  If they thought it necessary to take the children then why not place them with family like us or their grandparents.  The situation was bad enough for the children surely it wasn‘t necessary to make it even worse for them.  My parents also offered to have them and after a lot of discussion and interviews with nearly everyone it was agreed that he would enter therapy after xmas, the children would be with their grandparents and whilst their mother could be with them their father couldn‘t.

On the other hand he was allowed to enter the house and meet the children over Christmas and New Year if he was sober and so it was time for him to sober up.  It appeared to be going smoothly, I was a little worried that he wouldn‘t start treatment.  However, he went when he was supposed to so that the children would be allowed to return home.  Everything appeared to be going well and when he came home everyone felt good, but he wasn‘t sober for long.  No, hardly a month went by before he started to drink again, albeit slowly as my mother described it, but that made no difference, slowly without problems or not, he is an alcoholic and will always be an alcoholic, that won‘t change.  I wished that there was something I could do to change the situation but unfortunately that‘s not possible, I will be here for them, all of them, that‘s all I can do.