My little brother

[matty7]

been faithful to your promise is one thing but it does you both no good if your visiting him in prison, I can only speak for myself here - id speak to your older brother and just tell him all and then see if you can find a solution ,,, its obviously money related and a truly sympathise with your brother to provide for his family but low level dealing is easy for the police to deal with, sure hes tried this but look again at what benefits if any he can claim.. if hes in debt then get to a debt management firm..government approved though.....he may hate you for a while - get prepared for that though - hope someone has some better ideas than me m8,,, good luck

[Anonymous]

Thank you Wade. My brother doesn't have nice or fancy things, he just does it to pay for the bills. I worry a lot because my best friend who did the same thing. One day my friend disappeared. Two weeks later I found out he was in jail. It broke my heart. It hurt me to write him letters in jail and telling him how much I miss him. I don't want that to happen to my little brother or anyone else really. I hate that feeling of wondering if they are okay or not. It scares me sometimes and I get really worried if I havn't heard from Them. Where I live jobs are really hard to find and when you do get something it doesn't pay all that good. Thanks everyone I really feel better after reading these post. Its just I'm not good at opening up so easily so and I'm not comfortable sharing. But If I just hold it inside It gets me sad. I have a few friends but I don't know how to tell them in real life what I'm going through.

[Virge]

Trust me on this. I'm one of the guys people like your brother meet after they've been busted.

NO ONE sells "stuff" just to pay the bills. I mean NO ONE. Get that out of your head now.

Throwing your hard earned money at him will not make him stop selling. All it will do is

A.) Give him a greater incentive to lie to you about drug use and sales he's involved with

B.) Deplete the funds you're going to inevitably need for helping his wife and babies after he's busted.

[50Plus]

Have you told your older brother or your sister about your little brother?

Sometimes the family bond can impact one's actions.

[Anonymous]

No one sells "stuff" just to pay the bills. How do you know that? How do you know that you've met all the different types of people in the world to assume that? I feel like you are acting like my older sister, she thinks she knows everything and is better than everyone else. She doesn't offer any kind of support or sympathy. she doesn't even consider how I might feel or what I'm going through. He won't accept my money and if its my hard earn money, I can basically do what I want with it. I'm not trying to defend him or anything its just my family's been to hell and back, but that's a different story.

As for my oldest brother and sister we don't talk to them anymore. They never did contribute and although they fuss and act like they did something. I don't think I can remember a time where I can say they actually helped out. They watch at a distance and criticize without not knowing whats going on, than they gossip. My older brother doesn't know yet, but he is really hot headed and I guess that might be a good thing for this situation.

[Adam]

I'm sorry that you've been upset by some of the comments. We all mean well, but sometimes people forget that if we want to help someone, we need to start from where he's at, not where we think he should be.

Does his wife know? I'm wondering if she might be the one person who could turn this around?

[MikeW]

Are you certain your brother isn't using, only selling?

Whether he is or isn't, memechose has a point: If he does get busted caring for his family financially may fall on your shoulders.

The difficulty here is only your brother can change his behavior. You can reason with him or offer alternative solutions but if he chooses to continue, short of getting him busted, there's little you can do about it.

I'm not sure what more to say. In my limited experience with this sort of thing my advice is to make your statement about how you feel about it and then step back and give him and yourself some emotional 'open space'.

What I mean is, I believe our thoughts and feelings affect one another and affect our lives much more than we tend to realize. If you project a 'worry' and 'anxiety' state onto your brother's situation and try to make him change through your words coming from those emotional states, all you're doing is adding to his stress level (not to mention your own).

I'm not suggesting you 'ignore' this, you couldn't in any case now that you know about it. What I'm suggesting is you reflect on how your own 'fear' may affect you and your brother's relationship, making it more difficult for both of you. For example, what if you were able to step out of the 'fear' state and into a different state, something more like, "I'm concerned about what you're doing but I love you and want to be a support for you and your family, how *can* I help?" state. It's like stepping back, taking a deep breath, acknowledging 'yeah, things are as they are, now how can we deal with it effectively?'

It is difficult to advise people in such situations because there are SO many variables about which we know nothing. However, from what little I know, I can say that you, your brother, your whole family are experiencing (and apparently have been experiencing) a lot of stress in your lives, probably for a long time. In a way, this stress becomes 'habitual' and so we begin to 'recreate' stressful situations that perpetuate the stress, possibly even making it worse.

So, what can we do to begin to 'change' a situation like this? You've stated your opinion and your fear to your brother. He knows what you think and how you feel. Try to imagine how stressed out HE is that he would even feel the necessity to make this life choice, not to mention the stress of this life choice itself. So, you see, this is a very vicious 'negative, stressful, painful' field of emotional energies that are influencing everyone's feelings, choices and behaviors.

So, one thing I've found in my life is that *if I can do it* sometimes just taking responsibility for and changing my own emotional state can have a positive impact on situations like this. It is subtle, not immediate and almost 'secret'. To do this I have to first acknowledge my own emotional energy, how I'm feeling. I have to kind of look at it a bit more objectively and try to see it as an 'energy' that has effects on my life and others I care about around me.

The next, and more difficult thing, is to see if I can 'relax' some of that energy. I don't mean go into denial or ignore the problem, I mean consciously chose to not *react* to it as I habitually do. Rather I look to see if there might be some other emotional state or attitude that is more appropriate, less stress producing, and more likely to have a positive outcome in the long run.

Does that make sense?

Tension, anxiety, stress, fear--worry, they're like a self-perpetuating cycle. Undoing the knots they tangle us up in and that get repeated over and over, begins with recognition of the patterns and emotional energies that run them and then finding ways to loosen, untangle, and untie those knots. If I do it in my relationship to one person, this gives him a bit more 'breathing room' in his own stress to begin doing it for himself. But this is not a 'quick' fix. It is a long-range strategy. So, just doing this 'once in a while' won't cut it. It has to be an on-going choice for weeks, months, years.

Sorry, this may be too philosophical but that's all I can think of that might actually help.

[Virge]

No one sells "stuff" just to pay the bills. How do you know that? How do you know that you've met all the different types of people in the world to assume that? I feel like you are acting like my older sister, she thinks she knows everything and is better than everyone else. BLAH... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH....BLAH... BLAH.... BLAH.... BLAH....

BECAUSE
For just over 4 years I've volunteered to work the worst shift in the county jail to give "dads" weekends off.
BECAUSE
I see four or five NEW sellers of stuff every frackin weekend and every frackin one of them feeds me that line "I had to do something to pay the bills."
BECAUSE
When they tell me that I look them straight in the face and call them liars. It usually takes each of them 1 to 6 hours to come to their senses and talk honest with me about their drug history.
BECAUSE
I've seen too many well meaning misguided facilitators like yourself jump in huffed up like you are now and not know what the heck you're dealing with and wave the "butt out of my family card" and set up a situation for a rinse and repeat of the one that got their brother in jail the first time.
BECAUSE
I understand there is ALWAYS a limited number of possible variations involving people and illegal drugs. You won't find nuns running a meth lab. Every drug dealer is going to lie to get out of confrontations.

Just because you want to believe your little brother when he tells you he's selling drugs to pay the bills doesn't give you any grounds to expect me to make you think you're being smart about it. But what do I know? I'm sure you you think you have more experience dealing with these situations than I do.

Also..... every new incoming drug bust that comes into our jail gets a one time chance to talk to me or other designated officers to get what is essentially a deal of a lifetime to get them in rehab and avoid long sentences, fines and probation. I warn them UP FRONT not to lie to me. They ALL tell the same lies!!!!! I bet there's a similar program in your city or county. But........ you go ahead and run it your way since you're the expert.

[ChadCoxRox]

Meme's correct Anon, even though he's tough handed with it. That comes from his experience, so you can trust that for real. As a recovering addict and licensed therapist with over 35 years of personal and professional experience I am telling you Meme is correct Anon. The "paying the bills" is the reason for selling stuff is the TIP OF THE ICEBERG to control the interaction with you, who might have more influence to believe or disbelieve him than anyone else. And it works! You are in pain, help yourself. If you really do help yourself WELL you'll end up helping him the best you could as a direct result. HUGZ brother!

[Virge]

Meme's correct Anon, even though he's tough handed with it. That comes from his experience, so you can trust that for real. As a recovering addict and licensed therapist with over 35 years of personal and professional experience I am telling you Meme is correct Anon. The "paying the bills" is the reason for selling stuff is the TIP OF THE ICEBERG to control the interaction with you, who might have more influence to believe or disbelieve him than anyone else. And it works! You are in pain, help yourself. If you really do help yourself WELL you'll end up helping him the best you could as a direct result. HUGZ brother!

Thanks for putting a soft edge on what I was saying, CCRox. In my situation I never have to put a soft edge on it. In fact it works better for me not to even try to soft talk about it. Plus the "selling drugs to pay the bills" is THE NUMBER ONE MOST POPULAR LINE OF BULLSHIT new inmates try to feed me. When I read that it initiated a set response from me.