For eight days, the finest, most practiced doctors in the Midwest do all they can to revive my fallen brother. For eight days, I watch him die. He lies in a hospital bed, his body full of tubes, and I hope and pray for movement. When I take his hand in mine, I ask him if he can hear me, but there’s no response. What can he do? I think to myself. With tubes in his mouth speaking is out of the question. I ask him to blink, but he doesn’t. Instead he just gazes at me with half-open eyes and dilated pupils, drool coming from his mouth.
Almost a minute later, I feel the faintest squeeze, but I know at that moment that he is not going to make it. I look him in the eyes and tell him that I’m going to be a father, that I have made it in life, created my own family. I tell him that except for Amanda and me, he’s the first person on earth to know that I’m expecting a child. Tears stream down his face as his heartbeat skyrockets to over 180 bpm. Nurses rush in and give him sedatives, kindly asking me to let him rest.
The following day, a meeting with a team of ICU doctors is held and it is explained to my family and me that the only option is to take him off life support. I get up from the table and walk directly into his room and tell the nurses and his friends to leave the goddamned fucking room immediately. They all scurry out, and I weep as I explain to my unconscious younger brother that we are sending him home early, that he will be with our sister, and that I will be there soon. He passes away shortly after.
Lindsay and Tommy, however strongly they may have felt they were equipped to handle the situation Austin was in, were proven sorely mistaken. I know they did all they could, though, and it’s unfair to judge them with 20/20 hindsight. I have to forgive them all, including Austin. I am overcome with grief, but I know what’s important now is to hold onto my marriage and care for my pregnant wife. There is a bright future ahead of us and I need to prepare for it. I also need to remember just how far I have come. I feel the urge to escape from the emotional exhaustion, but I can’t allow his death to send me spiraling down my own rabbit hole again.
I have gone from risking my life for fun each day to helping others save theirs. I have gone from digging for half-eaten Whoppers out of the dorm garbage can to dining with Ethiopian diplomats in Africa. I’ve gone from being hunted by the police to being sought by local news stations for interviews about crime in the area, from being tossed around by cops while in handcuffs and thrown to the ground to being commended by them and told to keep up the good work I’m doing, after getting off on just a warning for speeding. I’ve gone from hopeless to having an overflowing amount of hope, enough to share. So no matter how awful I feel after losing my second sibling, I can’t allow myself to dwell on the fact that I lost two of my three siblings to early deaths from drugs. I know that Allison and Austin would want me to live a long, happy life, one they didn’t get to have. I tell myself I’m going to do it, need to do it—no matter what.
Austin’s funeral is the saddest day of my life. It is held in the same church that Allison’s was, near my parents’ beach house, and I sit in the same spot that I sat in for her funeral—only this time, Austin is not seated next to me. I am supposed to read from a script during the service, but I can’t bring myself to read the words in front of me. Instead I ask the congregation to say the Lord’s Prayer for me. They do so while I cry and make my way back to my seat. All I do is cry. People who knew Allison and Austin come up to me and join me in my tears. The Russos are there and I accept when they graciously offer to host a party in Austin’s honor. The party takes place at their house a week later, and during it we play Austin’s favorite songs on a stereo. His friends stop by to offer their condolences, and despite the impetus for the party, it is genuinely a good time. I drink and smoke weed at the party, and Amanda expresses concern over this; thankfully, it doesn’t lead to anything else.
In the end, I come to terms with Allison and Austin’s deaths by knowing they are in a place where there is no such thing as suffering, no such thing as pain, no such thing as tears—only joy. I know Allison and Austin are watching over me, surely curious to keep tabs on how I’m doing. Sometimes I hear them laugh when I tell a joke, other times I hear them offer condolences when I am sad. I sometimes see them when I pray. I dream of them, too. When I am the first to sit for a meal, I see their reflections on silverware, as if they are seated there with me.
Right after Austin’s funeral there was a family reception that I couldn’t bring myself to attend. I was too devastated. Instead, Amanda and I drove from the church back to the beach house and she helped me walk from the car into the house. I was so crushed that I struggled to stay on my feet. She helped me change my clothes and asked if I wanted to lie down with her, but I had the urge to go outside instead, to sit in the sun before retiring for the day, before it became dark. Amanda sat outside with me, never leaving my side.
We sat on a bench overlooking the bay of Green Bay, with its a stunning landscape and familiar beach below the front lawn. My experiences there have been complicated, but there’s no doubt that the place is beautiful, its landscape often likened to that of Cape Cod. My sister’s grave and the spot where my brother’s grave would soon go were in the garden to our right, but an amazing spectacle was in front of us. Flocks of birds began to fly up to about fifty feet above and in front of us, flapping their wings in such a way that they could hold their place in the air before losing altitude and flying back to where they started, only to return and repeat the action again and again. Doves, seagulls, crows, blue jays, red robins, barn swallows, pelicans, and even butterflies were flying right up to us and staying stationary in the air for as long as they could before leaving and coming right back moments later to do it again. Amanda and I looked on, eyes wide, and she said, “It’s got to be some sort of sign.” I said nothing at first, too burdened with grief to care. After a solid hour of it, something I have never seen nor heard of happening before, in all the summers I have spent there, I just knew it was a sign. “He’s in heaven with Allison,” I whispered.
Epilogue
When my sister died, I went off the deep end for a long time and got so heavily into drugs and crime that I threw years of my life away, but the event eventually proved to be a catalyst that brought about a radical life transformation. However, no transformation is smooth sailing and constantly on the up and up. I’m not here to sugarcoat any of it. Change is difficult, especially for an addict. We are surrounded by triggers, some more manageable than others, but nothing is as difficult to deal with as the death of a loved one, let alone two. Never did I imagine that my beloved little brother would eventually head down the same drug-induced path that I followed years earlier. Both of us lost friends from opioid abuse, both of us lost one of our sisters to opioid abuse, and now he’s gone too.
As I tried to come to terms with Austin’s passing, I began to suffer recurring nightmares. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a panicked state, covered in sweat, having dreamed that my brother and sister were in grave danger and that I had to spring into action in order to save them. I’d get up and out of bed, walk drearily into the bathroom, and bend over to drink some refreshing cold water directly from the faucet. Gulp after gulp, I’d start to calm down, snapped back to reality by the tangible sensation of cold water trickling down my throat and dripping from my chin. Relieved, I’d close the faucet, straighten up, and peer into the mirror, only to see my brother’s face reflected back into my eyes. I’d squint, lean forward, and think, What the . . ., as I reached up to touch my face and suddenly feel his skin, smell his scent. Swiftly and acutely aware that I was either losing my mind or still trapped in the dream world, I would take a deep breath, turn around, and slowly walk up the soft, carpeted hallway to my bedroom to join my pregnant wife under the sheets. As soon as my head hit the pillow and I closed my eyes, I would snap back to reality and wake up in a jolt from my deep sleep. Eerily enough, I would go through the same motions, heading to the bathroom to drink from the sink, but now, when I would loo
k up at the mirror, all I would see was my own face. I’d touch my cheeks and lightly slap my skin just to be sure it was no longer a dream, and then the image would abruptly blur as tears began to form in my eyes and stream down my face. Struggling to breathe, I’d sink to the floor with my back against the wall and spend an unknown amount of time with my knees to my chin and my hands covering my face, mourning the crushing and defeating loss of my best friend, most trusted ally, and overall favorite person on earth.
My brother always put me above himself and showed me the utmost respect and purest love. I, in turn, was very protective of him and was always expressing my love. Nobody fucked with my little brother, nobody, ever. I was so protective of him that not even our dad would dare be too harsh with him. After we lost Allison, this obsession with protecting and being there for my brother only grew unrelentingly, perhaps to an unhealthy degree, which my wife discovered as the months of mourning continued.
Immersed for so long in repeating and ever-evolving nightmares and tormenting thoughts, I have yet to become accustomed to waking up and suddenly remembering that both my sister and brother are gone, beyond my grasp. A flash flood of memories invariably and mercilessly cascades through my mind, a torrential downpour of emotion and vivid recollection of events that only my brother or sister and I shared. Realizing that I’m the only one left with these memories, I often feel very alone.
Lindsay was always very driven to make our parents proud and has become a lawyer at a prestigious firm, where she works long hours within view of the White House. We rarely ever hung out or talked much, and compared to my relationship with Allison and Austin, you could say we never did anything. Our contact today is minimal. And with my parents? No matter how hard we try, it seems the many years we spent at war with one another are preventing us from having a real relationship.
I cling to the feeling that my brother and sister are still available to me and I grind my teeth and clench my fists, thoroughly tormented by both my past and my present. I pray to God to relieve my suffering. When faced with the concept of life without them, common sense eludes me and I suddenly find myself feeling that I would rather not breathe another breath without them by my side. When this happens, nothing can snap me out of this excruciating abyss, nothing except my wife and child, my very own family, who miraculously came into my life at just the right time. Without Amanda and our child, I honestly believe I would no longer be here. Giving up wasn’t an option, yet finding the resolve within myself to carry on with my life, to be a good husband and father, and a sober one at that, proves to be a continuous uphill battle.
I fall down the rabbit hole again and again. Over the months following Austin’s death, I snuck around and killed the pain with whatever vices were available to me. Synthetic marijuana bought online? Yeah, I’d smoke that shit. Hide bottles of booze all over the place to ease my sorrow with a numbing gulp or two or three, why not? Smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, take off work, rekindle old toxic relationships? You bet. I was back to my old ways, out to do whatever I could to relieve the crushing agony within me so that, even if only for a short snippet in time, I could just relax, breathe, and not think at all.
Yes, I am a Christian, and yes, by the time of my brother’s death, I had already been an active missionary for three years, having done everything under the sun in the name of Jesus and His church, the world over. But after I watched my brother die, the new people in charge of the mission’s campus where I worked and lived felt compelled to force-feed me counseling. Christian counselors would come knocking on my door to check up on me, sometimes even more than once a day, but I promptly told them, in so many words, to fuck off. I had no interest in baring my soul to them. However, when my pregnant wife got a whiff of what I was up to—smoking synthetic weed every day while performing blue-collar tasks around the campus—and confronted me, I had no choice but to confess, to surrender and attend counseling. She made it very clear that if I persisted in my ways, if I continued down that dark path, our short marriage would end permanently and I would miss out on the birth of my child. So I followed suit.
Shortly before pouring my heart into this book, I met with a Christian counselor who told me that she had worked as a therapist for a secular institution for more than thirty-five years. She used Christian concepts and methods of internal conflict resolution with her secular patients without mentioning the religious link, so as not to create any type of bias against her treatment. Instead, she found a scientific explanation to her approach, which she kindly shared with me during my sessions with her and has given me the green light to share it now with you. I’m not saying this will work for everyone, but if it helped me, there’s a chance it could help you too.
Neurological activity in the brain has been mapped and studied by science to reveal what happens when a person thinks. When a thought is created, it takes the form of a neuron that has branched off from another neuron. As someone continues to think about something, those newly formed branches and neurons strengthen and multiply. If it is a positive thought, corresponding hormones are released that elicit joy and pleasure. If it is a negative thought, then the person is immersed in feelings of sadness and depression. Yet it is possible to overcome the negative “neuro-tree” by applying positive thinking to a previously negative thought, therefore replacing the negative neurons, killing off those branches, and at long last relieving yourself from the constant feelings of stress and depression.
My counselor further revealed to me that once a person has experienced an intensely negative event, it is almost impossible not to fall into a thought pattern that fortifies the negative neuro-trees in our brain, thus causing a person to become severely depressed. Marijuana and other narcotics seriously alter the neurological activity in that area of the brain, causing the thoughts and depression to temporarily come to a halt, but only while the person is intoxicated. Obviously, a vicious cycle can be created when we seek to continually numb the mental and emotional anguish we face.
To put all of this newly discovered knowledge into practice, my counselor not only helped me focus on God through the word of the Bible and prayer, she also had me meditate daily on these established truths. In addition to counseling, prayers, and meditation, I also openly spoke out loud with my wife about everything I was discovering and learning to further cement it in my own mind. By applying these tools to my life, I began to notice how the negative neurological patterns that had taken over my day-to-day living were beginning to reverse themselves. Suddenly, I realized that I was capable of experiencing, without any form of substance abuse, the freedom I so desperately craved from the severe depression caused by my brother’s death. It was another enormous turning point in my life, one that taught me the power of positive thinking combined with the right support network and faith.
We all have fleshly desires that we use as crutches, some more serious than others, but even the smallest form of addiction can easily spiral out of control and overtake our lives when we least expect it. That’s why addictions should be taken seriously, regardless of how big or small they are, before it’s too late. Confronted with the highest rates ever of opioid addiction in the United States, this has now officially become a pressing issue in our society, one that needs immediate attention. Something needs to be done, but what?
Having experienced severe narcotic addiction from both the standpoint of an addict and that of a loved one, having nearly killed myself and also watched my two beloved siblings die from opioid abuse, I’ve come to realize that the first step in helping an addict is to clearly understand and accept what we, as loved ones, can and cannot do. We cannot fix them; severe addiction is a disease and it needs to be treated as such with the help of trained professionals. We can, however, love the hell out of them. Without enabling their addiction, we can find ways to support them. Yet, we cannot let their problems consume our lives. We cannot take responsibility for their actions. However, the answer does not lie in completely cutting t
hem off either. When I was cut off rather than helped and set on the right path, it only aggravated my addiction further.
I know, it is a fine line to walk—loving addicts without enabling them, supporting addicts without condoning their behavior—but it is possible. If you find this path to be a difficult one to navigate, then seek out support. Addicts need support to heal, and so do their loved ones. In my own story, the most difficult part of recovering from the loss of my siblings has been accepting the fact that they killed themselves, completely and permanently destroying, then ending their lives. But by accepting this fact, I have been able to spare myself from allowing their actions to take a permanent toll on my own life. There is not much one can do as a loved one to help someone so sick that he or she chooses the pleasures of addiction over life itself, other than to reiterate that we are here for them if and when they are ready to get help. Communication is key. It’s important to let the addict know that if they choose to pursue sobriety, the door will always be open for them; however, if the family seems somewhat removed at times, it is not because we love them any less, it is simply because we need protection too, protection from a deadly disease that without the necessary help will rot and kill anyone in its path.
The other step in helping an addict does not fall on the family or friends or support groups, it falls on our criminal justice system. Did you know that around 75 percent of all nationwide incarcerated inmates are drug addicts? What does this mean? It means that many Americans who desperately need treatment are hitting rock bottom behind bars. Addiction is a disease. I’m not saying drug-related crimes should go unpunished, but these inmates also desperately need treatment. Punishing away a disease is not an option. Would you punish a cancer patient, a diabetic, or a person who has some sort of mental illness and expect that to heal them?
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