Sunlight

8 July 2021: “There’s so much frustration and being like, ‘Nothing you’re doing is making sense. Just take my hand and come over here to this side and then you will live.’ And the inability to do that rationally, deeply suggests that there is a disease component of this thing, right?” –Stephanie Wittels on this episode of Depresh Mode, talking about her brother, Harris, who died from an overdose. 

I am so glad to that John Moe found a new home at Maximum Fun after The Hilarious World of Depression was canceled, because his shows just continually make the world a better place. Hearing him talk with Stephanie about their experiences (John also lost a brother to addiction) rang so true to me, over and over again. 

The anger you feel towards the two people you are dealing with: your brother and the person he has become who is somehow still your brother but has permanently made your brother go away, years before he actually dies. I can remember yelling at him, “Can’t you just keep it together for a day?” (a wedding, a party, a holiday). 

The expert who told John his brother's brain had "holes in it" from the drugs and he would never recover fully, just like a friend who told me, "Oh yeah, that stuff changes the brain. It's permanent" and I felt the little bit of hope remaining inside me fade.

The way you wonder what difference you could have made. I was kicking around all kinds of intervention ideas right before he died, but who knows? 

And the very insight Stephanie talks about above—those moments where you realize how little control an addict can have. And you get it and you know it but you are still so frustrated and angry and you miss your still-alive brother so much, but not nearly as much as you will when he is gone. 

It’s so complicated and sad, but sunlight—talking about it all in public—can only help.