My 30 year-old schizoaffective (bipolar type) brother in law
is off his meds again (yet again) and possibly using heroin (yet again), the
two typically go hand in hand and I would say both but maybe I am just feeling
particularly defeated today and it’s just his meds. My husband and I work
diligently to not get mired down in the expressed emotion that seems all too
common in families where someone is suffering from schizophrenia spectrum
disorders, but I have broken down today and am looking for camaraderie and
advice and a place to just feel safe discussing this situation from our point
of view instead of my brother in law’s (let’s call him Jack–not his actual
name).
I have known my husband and Jack our whole lives. My husband
is my high school sweetheart and I can’t
remember a time when we were not all a family or like a family. When we were
teenagers my husband’s sister committed suicide and it gutted everyone, their
mom never quite recovered and she died a decade later after a brief illness.
Jack handled it by self-medicating his way from typical teenage pot smoking to
injecting heroin within the span of a year. But, man is he brilliant, he has
always been phenomenally intelligent. He handled his addiction and getting a
degree from a top tier university simultaneously and only came crashing down in
his early 20s when the paranoia and mood disorder issues led to a breakdown in
a foreign country and the schizoaffective diagnosis. He has not lived on his
own or held a stable job outside of positions within various family businesses
ever since and even those have been fraught with major blow ups and quitting
for a few months here and there. Jack has never been allowed to fail, my in
laws were so broken by their daughter’s death and so concerned for Jack
suffering a similar fate that he has been enabled his entire adult life. He
lives in a family vacation home and pays no rent or utilities or health care
costs, he blew through tens of thousands of dollars of inheritance from a
distant relative and only now has run out of money and declared bankruptcy when
my father in law would no longer bail him out. Though, I must admit that we are
currently living in my father in law’s house while my husband finishes his PhD
and I finish graduate school. However, we pay the utilities and rent and
contribute our share across the board, including caring for my father in law as
he gets older. There is a strong history of dementia and my father-in-law is in
his mid-70s and needs some small help (but not full help).
My husband and Jack have had a tumultuous relationship, to
say the least. My husband developed into a quiet over achiever who got easily
over looked due to the sheer magnitude of issues accompanying his brother and
sister. He resents how much he has had to acquiesce to Jack’s changing moods.
They briefly lived together ten years ago or so and had a falling out over
hygiene habits and Jack’s aggressive rages. Those rages (outside of teenage
fights) have only been physical (until
today ) twice in adulthood. Once when Jack choked my husband until he passed
out and then drove him to the hospital, they were both in college at the time,
and drinking. And two years ago when in a rage over something I cannot remember
he drove to my husband’s work and charged at him at his desk. My husband was
able to subdue him after a few punches and left Jack with a black eye. We
thought it wouldn’t happen again because my husband shut him down and is just
physically stronger. But the angry, aggressive behavior never stops, it just
typically doesn’t become physical. It always seems more of an intimidation
tactic. People have always backed down from Jack
because his anger is huge and frightening and so disproportionate to the
situation. We once left a family vacation after he started yelling about how
our 5 year-old autistic daughter was out to get him and we didn’t feel safe.
Jack bullied his mom when she was alive, threatening to
commit suicide like his sister if he didn’t get money from her. He would also
threaten to go off his meds as a retaliatory technique. He still uses that one.
No one knew she was giving him money until after she died. His behavior, by
that time was ingrained. He used the same tactics to get money from my father
in law, though he put a stop to it rather quickly and now requires Jack to work
(usually manual labor for $10-16 per hour depending on the task) for money. At
one point he was several hours away and threatened to kill himself and we drove
to him and when we got there he was asleep and said he didn’t know what we were
talking about. This looks all so
negative and that isn’t totally fair. Jack, when stable and medicated and
sober, is brilliant and witty. He is loving and generous. Some of my best
memories have been my husband, Jack and I laughing late into the night for the
past 20 plus years. Jack is capable of so much. He is this great writer and is
so well read. He has these insights into the world and the universe that are so
unique. He is loyal to a fault. He has always had difficulty making friends in
sober circumstances, or sober friends period, but the ones he has he is loyal
to. And when he is good, he is loyal to us too. I have always considered him
one of my closest friends and I have always been one of the only people who
could address issues that might be considered more critical (ie hygiene or work
habits or his drinking) and I am the only member of the family who can bring
those things up, without a blow up (but I choose those battles very, very
carefully and only address maybe 4 of those conversations per year and never
about his drug use). He has several
firearms, though none of us know how many. My husband and I are generally
anti-gun, though that is due to his sister’s suicide and the use of firearms.
Jack went to drug rehab in his early 20s, but has never been a psychiatric inpatient
either voluntarily or involuntarily despite periods of psychosis that drove his
parents to a hotel out of fear, he has been arrested for one or two minor
incidences that must have been misdemeanors. We have never called the police
during a rage and usually either we leave or he leaves at some point. I do
believe that as a family we have purposefully avoided police interaction
because we are all worried what might happen if he had a criminal record and on
the back end, the rage that would come to us on the back end of an arrest that
we called for.
And that is the very, very long back story that leads to
today. In the past 4 or 5 months Jack has been doing the best I have seen him
do in his adult life. He is involved in a somewhat stable relationship with a
great girl who is older but pretty naïve but she is sober and has a job and
lives on her own (though he hasn’t disclosed his diagnosis to her and avoids
her when he is unstable), he was working for a family member again and had gone
several months without a blow up, he is attending school for a certificate in a
profession that doesn’t work with people (best idea for him). He has always
exhibited grandiose schemes for life that aren’t tangible like moving to Greece
to be an ex pat and write, though he has no money or book ideas, moving off
grid which is attributable to his paranoia; and he has had none of those
recently. He has been staying with us, off and on, because it is closer to his
classes. My husband and I (we are currently living off of our savings and
student loans) have been buying his food for him and cleaning up after him and
generally taking care of him and his menagerie of pets and it has caused us
significant stress and frustration. He completely emptied out any alcohol
around, would eat our highly picky autistic daughter’s food, or my weird food
(I’m a celiac) and never contributed money or housework etc. But even with
that, he was functioning at a higher level than usual and so we swallowed our
frustrations because he was doing so well otherwise. A few days ago, you could
sense the moodiness that usually comes before a blow up. At 6am this morning he
showed up at the house unannounced, already angry at something else. I had previously
resolved to talk to him about contributing more to the household and that set
him off. He started screaming about our kid’s toys and how the neighbors are
watching him. My husband stepped in because Jack was being aggressive with me
and then my father in law came out and that was it. My husband lost his temper
with him (which is unusual) and let loose with a litany of backlogged issues. I
don’t know who became physically aggressive 1st (though it may very
well have been my husband, he was furious) and though no major damage was done
my father in law and I pried them a part and Jack took off in a rage, but not before
asking for money. He then went and quit his job (it was his last chance) and
drove off. My father in law later told me that Jack was off his meds (again-multiple
times). I had told my husband, last week, that I thought he was using heroin or
oxy again because of his bouts of euphoria, but they also could have been manic
phase related, he usually relapses once a year but typically seems to pull out
of it.
I can’t imagine that anyone has read this whole thing, but it
has been incredibly cathartic to write it all out. This is the first time it
has all been in one place, in its entirety. I think we usually feel lost in the
madness. I want to find some long term solution. We are his only family. We are
extremely tempted to move ourselves, our kids and my father in law as far away
as possible next spring when my husband finishes his PhD program. Abandon the
vacation home to him and wipe our hands clean and let him live his life, on his
terms, alone. It sounds very appealing. However, at some point, my husband will
be in charge of the family estate and will need to make the decision whether to
give his brother a lump sum inheritance (it’s moderate, but not huge) that he
will blow through in a period of years on who knows what but he is horrible
with money or to give him a small stipend annuity that might keep him going until
50, when it will be gone and he will have not been forced to learn basic life
skills. We both miss who he was and we see glimpses every so often, but I think
that we are both so exhausted from the constant battle that we want to just
walk away for now. I would love advice, any advice, from anyone. It’s lonely
out here. TL:DR…brother in law manipulative and won’t take medication with
regularity and I am tired.
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is making his voices disappear. He does not like this!!! He loves the voices inside his head - almost like his best friends. Luckily I think for him his voices are “The Father, Son and Holy Ghost - and many many angles”. He says he will do anything he can to not lose his friends. Also - he did a recent stint in our local physc ward. Two or three days. He does not believe he had a psychotic episode, only a seizure. He WILL NOT admit that he has sz, wont even say the word. Just wondering if anyone else has a patient that totally denies his or her illness - and loves the voices inside their heads?