'My Brother's Drinking Is Destroying All of Our Lives!'

Your family's avoidance keeps everyone sick.

Untitled (1973), Jane Graverol

Dear Polly,

I have a problem I am terrified has no answer — because my question asks too much of other people. And if there is one truth I’ve learned from your writing, your answers to other people’s problems and life, it is this: You cannot change anyone.

The short version: My baby brother is a severe alcoholic, and my parents — without realizing it — enable him and have prolonged his illness for years. How do I ask my parents to stop loving my alcoholic brother in a way that is killing him, and them?

So far, the only coping mechanism I’ve found is to pretend everyone is doing their best — but it’s not holding up anymore, because deep down we all know we aren’t. The best thing is too fucking hard.

The fragile structure that my brother’s addiction — and consequently my parents’ daily life — has become is barely afloat and sucking the life out of everyone. I fear it will collapse into the darkest grief; if nothing changes soon, I genuinely believe someone will end up dead. I am terrified.

I don’t know what to do, and that is why I am writing to you, in the hope that you can help me help my parents. The long version is complex and dates back ten years, but I’ve tried to include the bits I think you need to know.

I see addiction like a cancer that won’t kill you — as long as you drink grotesque amounts of alcohol every day. You’re not really living; you’re destroying everything around you in a lonely, confusing blur, but the pain from the cancer stays numb.

There is a treatment — a barbaric cure: life itself must burn down. Families have to watch, powerless, because if they step in, the cancer spreads.

Doctor: “Yes, untreated it’s fatal. But the cure is simple: let him destroy his life. Watch as he loses friends, dignity, money, safety. Don’t let him in when he’s drinking — even though it’s the only thing easing his pain — because each time you soften the blow, the cancer regains power. Only when he’s got himself thrown out of every home, he's broke, and broken at rock bottom will he be strong enough to fight it. This is the ONLY way. I can’t prescribe anything to help you — but suggest you lock the door and turn off your phone at night. How does that sound? ”

Me: “That sounds fucking inhuman, you savage unloving prick!”

For years I felt like this, but after being dragged through the wreckage of this disease and after years of research into addiction through podcasts, therapy, counseling, countless AA Reddit spirals, and hundreds of conversations with former addicts — I finally get it. I am now the one standing beside that doctor, begging my parents to do what he says.

Even writing this makes me feel sick, like a traitor to my brother whom I love so fucking much. Asking my parents to deny and hurt him to save him feels like a blood betrayal. I understand why they avoid it — forcing him out of our homes nearly destroyed me and my siblings — but watching this toxic cycle repeat for ten years is now worse. I’m terrified of the consequences if it doesn’t stop.

My brother’s severe addiction began with him buying bottles of vodka from the local store before school because his social anxiety was so suffocating he couldn’t face a classroom sober. Nearly ten years later, nothing has changed. He is still a severe alcoholic.

I know that story because he confessed it to me once in a drunken spiral, sobbing and puking violently through the night. His exgirlfriends have told me versions of the same confession. I brought it up with him once, when he was on an upward, semi-sobering couple of days. He denied it and said he doesn’t have a problem. I reminded him he was half-naked and covered in piss, that his housemates had threatened to call the police. He said he didn’t need my shit, left to get drunk immediately, pushed me out, and the cycle started again.

The pain of imagining my beautiful, gentle baby brother at 18, so desperate he had to drink just to get through school, is unbearable. When he first told me about it, it gave me an instant migraine. It’s too fucking sad and not knowing this was going on? I let him down so badly. I wish I could have stopped it then, and so I have to stop it now.

I tried to tell my parents this drinking origin story, but I saw it break them. They swept it away because the truth hurt too much. Once my mum bravely brought it up and my brother spat such hurtful venom denying it. And while he cycles drunk to sober, my parents naively hope that their beautiful son will be better now.

He has wasted ten years of his life. He has lost friends, stolen, lied, and drunkenly emotionally and verbally abused his own mum (in a way his sober self would be deeply ashamed of), and terrified us all at one point or another. I’ve seen him urinate on himself in public, hurl bottles (one nearly hit someone’s face), and destroy relationships in humiliating ways. At his worst, drunk and confused, he crosses horrifying boundaries with people he loves. Now living at home again he pushes my parents to their absolute ends.

But once he sobers up, my parents soften and passively rescue and allow this cycle to repeat itself. I understand how much kindness and generosity they have for his situation. It exhausts them and is destroying them but they never sanction any kind of repercussion for the terrible things he inflicts upon himself, them, and others. In theory it is unwavering kindness: no responsibility for actions, no consequences, nothing needs to change. But the terrible truth is that it’s actually passive abandonment. Allowing this all is abandoning the boy that needs to be saved. It lets the monster rage grow until it destroys everything.

He sometimes manages weeks or even months sober. Once, he was sober for six months. But it wasn’t real sobriety or real recovery. He avoided real life, exercising endlessly and going to bed early, terrified of triggers. His social anxiety is so severe that something as ordinary as a train tide can send him spiraling back into drink. But my parents see a week or a month sober and decide he’s “getting better,” blocking out the rest.

They still believe in magical solutions. Just last week, during a “good spell,” I mentioned I was going to the US for work. They suggested my brother come with me — as if a holiday, a fresh start, and his good looks in LA could save him. They keep believing something external will fix him, but nothing will, until he and they face reality.

For four years now, my brother has lived rent-free with no job in their house, on a credit card for food that my dad pays (he did finally cancel it during the last spiral, but we’ll see). He lives with no rules as a lodger, let alone a severely unwell alcoholic. Sober, he is kind, clever, charming, funny, painfully shy, and riddled with severe anxiety and disordered eating. Drunk, he is manipulative, cruel, judgmental, and plays my parents against each other mercilessly.

Despite how many times he has cycled, they never allow him to even getting close hitting rock bottom. He never feels the true consequences of his actions. Right now, that’s delaying him getting better.

I was hopeful recently, becasue after a very bad spiral, my parents seemed even more broken and asked my partner, a very kind and compassionate man who is ten years sober himself, for help. He talked to them for hours about the process of real sobriety including the rock bottom consequences addicts have to face. He even helped me draw up a living agreement contract my parents could give my brother before for the next relapse — very simple rules to help with boundaries and consequences. The contract said he could stay at home rent- and bills-free only if he stopped drinking, attended AA at least six times a week, went to therapy once a week, and got a sponsor within 2 weeks. If he broke any rule, he had to leave. I even found all the local AA meetings, times, and routes to get there. But they were once more swayed by him in his sober state, and the contract was never implemented and maybe not even shown to my brother.

Instead my brother attended NA (not AA, which is a typical addict diversion) but said he wouldn’t go back because it was depressing. He saw a GP, left with antidepressants, but didn’t mention his alcohol consumption to her at all . My dad applauded it as huge progress. It was this same weekend the that conversation about visiting LA with me happened. Three days later he started drinking again.

Even though my parents specifically asked for this help, they never did anything with it. I don’t know if was because they didn't agree or because they were scared. But nothing was implemented and the cycle resumed.

The toll this is all taking on my mum terrifies me. She is getting older, more fragile, and suffers from panic attacks and anxiety. I am honestly afraid this stress could kill her. If my bother pushes her that far I will never forgive him, and I don’t think he would forgive himself, either. I’m scared that he’s unaware of what he’s doing to her.

My dad is equally exhausted and anxious. I’m worried that he’s depressed but hiding in denial, since he often ridicules the idea of therapy. He and my brother missed my wedding in December, avoiding explaining why they weren’t coming, sidestepping everyone’s confusion about why they weren’t there. I think they couldn’t face the reality of what a mess their mental health had become. It’s something I don't feel like I can really forgive as they have never explained why they didn't come. And it broke my heart but it altered it, too.

Our family has a terrible history of passively burying and denying traumas and it makes everything worse. This passiveness is wrecking the beautiful family and the relationships that we privileged to have. It’s a fucking gift to be able to love your family this much. I miss the laughter of my brother and my parents so fucking much.

It's the understatement of the century to say this situation fucking sucks for everyone involved. It terrifies me every day that if nothing changes, soon it will be too late.

When drunk, my brother often shouts a version of “You never tell me off!” at my parents, or about them. I think he knows he’s never faced real consequences. I think he wants them to really, really do it.

Polly, how do I help my parents see that their kindness is, in fact, keeping him trapped? How do I help them understand that the most loving thing they can do is the hardest: to let him fall, so that maybe, finally, he has a chance to live. And they will too.

Please help me help them.

A Desperate Sister

Dear Desperate Sister,

I feel so sad for you and your brother and your parents. You’re all kind, pure-intentioned people who are doing their best.

In your case, your best means nudging your parents gently and politely, because you sense that confronting them and enforcing firm boundaries would ostracize them and make you feel even more guilty. Your parents’ best means supporting your brother however they can and trying hard not to confront him or challenge him, because they don’t want him to be alone and in danger. Your brother’s best means drinking in order to avoid the crushing shame he feels when he gets the slightest glimpse of how broken and lost he is.

Everyone doing their best is what’s worst for everyone involved.

Your best — sidestepping conflict, appearing to forgive your dad’s and brother’s absence at your wedding — enforces the lie they’re living, that everything is okay. Your brother’s best – pretending he’s fine and then drinking to numb his anxiety, depression, and humiliation — keeps him locked into a miserable, dependent life where no one will be honest or acknowledge his sickness or pain. Your parents’ best —living in a fantasy that your brother is fine while also ignoring their own untreated anxiety and depression — traps everyone in a decade-long game of make-believe with your brother in the starring role.

It’s amazing that your brother is ASKING DIRECTLY for your parents to tell him off. Because halfway through your letter, I thought: He wants them to get angry. He wants them to react passionately, even in some flawed or insulting way. He wants them to admit that he’s ill. He wants them to show that they are human, that they are hurt, that they’re in pain.

Your brother wants your parents to tell the truth. Your parents aren’t responsible for your brother’s drinking, of course. But your parents are responsible for keeping your brother dependent on them, for not standing up to him, for not acknowledging that there’s a big problem here, for not admitting that he’s not functioning, and that he’s been struggling for more than a decade now. Unfortunately, reckoning with all of this is the hardest thing they’ve every faced.

Because being honest about the severity of his problem means being honest about their own enormous struggles and the big problems, alone, together, and in their own families of origin. Being honest means facing their own guilt, their own darkest fears about the future, their own lurking self-hatred and inability to connect meaningfully with each other or the people they love, and their own enormous shame over how their happy, loving, well-intentioned family landed here.

The confusing thing about addiction is that you can’t outrun the shame. Sensitive, affectionate people pleasers like your parents and your brother are sometimes more prone to extreme fantasies and addictions than others for this reason. As the humiliations and the shame build up, they take more extreme measures to flee those feelings.

Your parents and your brother are so similar on that front! The shame says “All of this darkness is my fault.” But that’s not entirely true. As crucial as it is for your brother to take responsibility for his addiction, his shame is asking him to take the blame for the whole world around him, including your family’s dynamic, which is warped and broken. His shame wants him to believe that everyone is doing their best and any darkness and ugliness that transpires is his fault.

Your parents’ shame also tells them that all of the darkness is their fault. So many beautiful, loving humans land where they are right now, and I know that they’ve been doing their best within the limits of their capacity to face the truth, to reckon with what’s broken inside them, to conquer demons that lived inside their hearts long before your brother was born. I know their enormous love for him makes all of this even harder.

That said, there is clearly a tradition of denial, avoidance, and blame in this picture, and it didn’t start with your parents. Their shame wants them to believe, at times, that all of this ugliness comes from them. At other times, their shame tells them that all of the darkness starts with their youngest son. They can’t outrun this crushing shame, and it’s making them behave terribly without even knowing it.

This is why addiction and codependence are so confusing. Because love can’t fix what’s wrong all by itself. Brutal honesty and an ability to look with clear eyes at the darkness invading every corner of this picture are absolutely necessary.

The problem is that honesty kicks up more shame. That’s why it’s so important for everyone involved to be honest about their own mistakes and problems and shame, too. Everyone needs to be honest, and everyone needs to keep forgiveness at the forefront of the picture EVEN AS YOUR BROTHER IS BEING KICKED OUT OF THE HOUSE.

Compassion heals shame. It’s not just compassion for your brother that everyone needs. Everyone needs to treat themselves with compassion as well. Even those of us who are reading your story have to exercise compassion for your situation. Because NONE of us are above this kind of a mess! None of us could glide in and fix everything here. Addiction muddles the picture, and shame keeps everyone afraid and anxious and in the dark.

Compassion clears the air and makes room for honesty, vulnerability, and healing.

Now let me be particularly compassionate about how much pain your brother has ingested thanks to this situation. Your brother is a sensitive soul who ingested the pathologies of your entire family and couldn’t handle it. Now he’s a scapegoat for all of your family’s dysfunction. You grew up in a microcosm of pathological avoidance where the truth was never acknowledged or named. This started before your brother started drinking. Whenever something bad happened, no one mentioned it. No one talked about anything that could lead to uncomfortable conversations or create a conflict.

Your brother is a thoughtful and observant witness. The dissonance between what he witnessed and what he heard out of people’s mouths made him anxious. He developed a worldview that no matter how polite and kind people are on the outside, they’re full of judgments and resentments under the surface. Because none of these real thoughts and feelings were discussed in your family, he was left to imagine that they were bigger and darker and more frightening than they really were. He was petrified of what remained unspoken. His huge imagination filled in the gaps and made him anxious and depressed, but he also blamed himself for feeling this way and for having such a big imagination (which is actually a talent and a skill and doesn’t have to destroy you if you have ways to enjoy and indulge it). His intelligence exacerbated his shame, convincing him that he was the villain in every picture. But his shame also persuaded him that he couldn’t trust anyone, and he couldn’t be himself without worrying that other people secretly hated him.

This is where self-hatred is born, in the dishonesty of avoidant people who can’t take the risk of telling the whole truth to someone who is in pain and needs them to show up. Convenient bullshitting and gaslighting, withdrawing in order to save yourself from true intimacy with the people you love, creates warped universes inside sensitive minds and hearts.

As a result, whenever anyone had the slightest negative reaction to your brother, he felt like he was being punched in the face. Silence became rejection to him. Polite acquiescence became disapproval.

And no one told him, “We all feel anxious and afraid! Everyone alive feels these things! We all have trouble speaking up. We all fear judgment and rejection. You are normal. You are a smart, talented, thoughtful soul, reacting to a family that conveniently refuses to see anyone or hear anyone who might threaten their fantasies about who they are!”

If anyone told him that he was normal, from a young age, that would mean taking at least partial responsibility for his troubles and problems. That would mean that the warped avoidance of his family, and the depression, anxiety, fear, and pain of his two parents would have to be acknowledged. That would mean that your brother didn’t cause every single scary, dark problem your family has ever had.

But no one wanted to look at their own struggles, anxieties, and fears. So they pretended that they were happy and fine and there were no problems and there was no darkness there. And when your brother started drinking, they slowly started to pretend that wasn’t a problem, either.

To your brother, this looked like another way of hating him behind closed doors.

Now the more your brother’s actions announce “This is a real problem that might kill me!” the more vehemently your parents deny that his problem is real and avoid setting limits and enforcing consequences.

Your father’s shame is absolutely enormous. His shame controls him or he wouldn’t house and feed your brother without rules or boundaries designed to help him to get sober. His shame scares him to death or he wouldn’t skip your wedding.

Think about the kind of shame it takes to skip your own daughter’s wedding. Sure, it’s horribly embarrassing to acknowledge that your son is an alcoholic. But think about the alternative: You’ll have to make excuses, for the rest of your life, for missing the wedding of your daughter, someone you love more than you can even acknowledge or express!

Crushing shame made that choice for your father and his youngest son. And crushing shame is what keeps your father’s head in the sand and keeps your brother getting violently drunk.

What they both need to hear is that they’re not alone. Most people on this planet struggle with the huge weight of shame. And look, I don’t want to exaggerate, but my honest view is that huge numbers of humans today are so unbelievably, pathologically avoidant that they’re destroying their own happiness and infecting everyone around them with more misery.

Avoidance is like walking around with the flu and insisting to everyone you meet that you’re not sick. You’re feverish and coughing and spraying your virus all over everyone you know and they’re getting sick, too, but you won’t acknowledge it. You’re defensive about it. You counterattack randomly, with shame as your weapon: “Stop making such a big deal about this! You’re the one who’s making things bad!”

Once the broken, warped family system is set in stone, everyone gets locked into the fantasy that everything is fine (or it’s all about to get better), and they can’t be budged. AND THEN THE PERSON WHO NAMES THE PROBLEM BECOMES THE NEW SCAPEGOAT.

That’s why you’re so afraid. You see that part very clearly, even if your full understanding is only subconscious. You don’t want to lose your family over this. You don’t want to be blamed for everything that’s going wrong here, just by naming it.

Over 13 years of writing this column, I’ve seen it countless times. So many lovable people out there cut off their families because their families are pathologically avoidant and circle the wagons to protect each other in their shared state of denial. It’s so hard to be honest and have firm boundaries when your family is also very lovable. Even in their shared denial, they feel that they’re doing their best! And it’s so confusing, because any direct confrontation elicits a group attack against the truth teller. It’s chilling how far people who are secretly depressed, anxious, and massively avoidant will go to blame other people for the mess they’re in.

I’m not advocating cutting off your family. My personal path through dysfunctional family dynamics often includes sidestepping trouble. I work very hard, every single day, to align myself with my principles and forgive myself and my family for not being great at intimacy. We are all doing whatever we can to thrive. We’re all flawed in our own ways.

And let me be perfectly clear with you: These are not rare or exotic problems we’re talking about. So many people are so fucking avoidant these days. It’s the air we all breathe. You don’t have to be unhappy or massively screwed up to shy away from conflict, trouble, and honest confrontation. Moreover, a lot of what gets chalked up as the selfish and narcissistic behavior of people who draw firm boundaries and refuse to engage with toxic situations is actually the self-preservation of humans who dare to name problems and voice their limits. I’m not saying people can’t be merciless and myopic on all sides. I’m not even saying that some people don’t indulge their avoidant, dismissive impulses under the false flag of firm boundaries and self-care.

People do alllllll kinds of unhinged shit out there. But I would argue that a major cause of the confusion, bewilderment, addiction, selfishness, and alienation that we’re seeing in the world at this moment is avoidance, dishonesty, and shame.

Our shame tells us that we can’t be honest and set limits. Our shame makes us feel guilty for calmly expressing our principles. Our shame teaches us to be conflict-avoidant and to stigmatize those who refuse to bullshit us. Our shame makes us fearful of the slightest criticism from anyone, ever, because (remember your brother here) your shame tells you that the tiniest slight means you’re the cause of all darkness in the world.

If you doubt me, go online and witness the way people talk to each other. A big percentage of people online are ready and willing to call a complete stranger THE CAUSE OF ALL DARKNESS IN THE WORLD. Anyone who makes a mistake is pure evil. Anyone who defends someone who is flawed is pure evil. Anyone who merely appears not to be outraged at pure evil (subjectively defined) is pure evil.

When shame is in control of all of us, words don’t make sense anymore.

Crushing shame created this world, and only empathy can release us from hell. Only forgiveness and a reckoning with our own darkness, self-hatred, big mistakes, guilt, and fear can save us from ourselves and each other.

WE ALL HAVE TO HIT ROCK BOTTOM. We all have to welcome the ways that we are humbled, every day. We all have to admit that we are confused, and ignorant, and deeply flawed.

So, I know that’s a lot. But you have to do more than your best right now. You have to speak clearly, calmly, and honestly to your family in a way you never have before. You don’t have to yell or make any big announcements. You can just show up and when you are asked, you can simply speak the truth for a change — with calm compassion as your ally.

You all need to go to Al Anon. Decide for yourself how you feel when you’re there. Struggle all you want with the basic structure of the program. It’s fine to have mixed feelings. Tolerate the discomfort. Let it be depressing. Be as ambivalent as you want, but start from the principles and guidelines that have helped millions of people save themselves from addiction. Accept that you are all powerless in the face of this gigantic monstrous beast. Accept that your spirit is being crushed under the weight of the enormous shame that you inherited from this shame-ruled world.

Notice how shame destroys your joy, every day. Notice how shame locks people into miserable lives everywhere you go. And resolve to become a part of the solution.

Your brother can choose joy simply by looking directly at the truth. No one wants him to feel like shit about being one small piece of an ugly picture. Every single person in your family needs to understand that this mess has been a collaboration. Now the collaboration is over, and everyone needs to do very, very hard work on themselves individually — to reckon with their own shame and anxiety and depression, to tell the truth to themselves for the first time, to understand how they landed here, to prevent landing here over and over.

Everyone needs to forgive themselves. No one is above this mess. No one in the world. And everyone needs to take responsibility for cutting a brand new path through this wilderness, towards the light.

The good news is that you are full of so much love, all of you. You are all so loyal to each other, even as you hurt each other. You all want nothing more than to be a happy, loving family again. But none of you can afford to live inside the fantasy that things were perfect before your youngest brother started getting drunk. There is darkness here that you need to acknowledge. It’s not going to work to pretend that one person drinking has ruined everything. That’s not fair. That’s the kind of scapegoating that grows from shame, and it needs to stop.

You all have to do the hardest thing in the world right now. You have to notice how often shame and self-hatred dominate your actions. You have to keep reckoning with that shame. Every single member of your family has to do this, too. But you can only control your own path. Lower your expectations and be realistic about the fact that you each have to do this work on your own time, at your own pace, in your own way. There’s nothing for it.

You can’t take responsibility for your family anymore. Everyone in your family is going to struggle mightily just to take responsibility for themselves. Everyone needs to be in therapy individually. And everyone needs to make some room for everyone else to struggle out in the open.

It’s time to honor the truth. Honesty and compassion will clear away this crushing weight in due time. Escaping into booze will no longer look like salvation, once honesty and compassion are in place. Reality is the ultimate drug, once you aren’t trying to outrun your shame.

You can do this. I think your brother can do this, too. He needs so much more pushback right now — which is also love, which is also honesty, which is also a kind of forgiveness. He needs to be allowed to leave his starring role in this twisted story. He needs to be told: You are normal. You had a normal reaction to a fucked up, dishonest world. You are a survivor. You keep trying to find a way to get everyone around you to tell the truth.

I don’t know what your parents can or can’t do. I think realistically they’re the ones who are the most troubled and the most stuck here. That doesn’t mean that this situation is all their fault. I’m just guessing that there’s so much more fear, dread, rigidity, and defensiveness there than you ever imagined there could be. Breaking out of the happy family fantasy they served you as a kid isn’t optional. It’s a mandatory first step to getting the calm distance you need to stop seeing your brother as the lead character here. He is ingesting avoidance and despair from your parents every day he continues to live with them. Their support makes him weaker.

Alone in the world, he might discover that he’s far stronger and happier than he ever imagined he could be. Your parents’ dependence on his absolute reliance on them — the way it makes them feel like they’re at least partially in control of what happens next — is keeping him weak. Their anxieties take shape in his body. My guess is that he needs separation from them in order to thrive. He won’t necessarily understand that at first, or even soon, but he’s smart and sensitive enough that he could learn it very quickly once he’s out the door, even as he’s struggling.

But these aren’t your problems anymore. Brace for a storm, but resolve to get some distance.

It’s the hardest fucking thing in the world, to be where you are. I’m sorry you’re here. But to get out of this terrible state you’re in, you have to do more than your best. You have to honor the truth.

At first the truth is so hard. But then it makes everything easier. EVERYTHING. Even when things are dark. Even when it’s breaking your heart. The truth will save you. Trust that. Honesty without shame is freedom.

Polly

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Thanks for reading Ask Polly! You might not think your intimate relationships will be improved by more honesty, but you might be very, very wrong about that. Challenge yourself to speak directly and calmly, without shame, in everything you do, and watch as the world changes shape around you. We can make this world a more beautiful, loving, compassionate place, just by reckoning with our own shame, avoidance, and fear. Believe it.

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