Drugs, Alcohol, Addiction & Suicide

This is a very hard subject to write about, but I think it is important to recognize how we deal with these issues. I didn’t pay much attention to what others may have been struggling with when I was younger. I guess I was living with my own struggles.

Living with an alcoholic father, I learned very young in life to not judge others
too quickly. We never know what others may be going through! If someone died from an overdose or suicide, I felt sorry for their loved ones, but it never hit me until I lost someone very close to suicide.

I write about these issues that some of my family members had to deal with because I think it is important to know that we can also have the addiction gene passed onto us. Research suggests alcohol addiction is about 50 per cent heritable, while addiction to other drugs is as much as 70 per cent heritable. We can also become
addicts even if we do not have it in our DNA. It’s also a matter of choice, and it is so important that we are aware of this. If you know this, you may be more careful!

I sometimes think that if I hadn't been aware of this, I would have followed in my father and sibling's footsteps. When you deal with pain daily, it would be much easier to just pop some pills or alcohol to numb the pain. I choose to deal with the pain and be aware of what I am doing. I don't want to live this life stoned or drunk!
I certainly would not want to inflict the pain one feels watching their loved one struggle on anyone I care about.

When you watch someone with an addiction, you feel helpless. You may try to help, but this is beyond your control. All you can do is try to get them the proper help and tell them you love them.

The rest is up to them!

Alcohol Addiction & Suicide

On June 25th, 1999, I received the news that my brother-in-law had committed suicide. He had been like a father to me. He was my sister’s husband. He knew me from my birth because our families were friends. They would bring me with them when they needed a chaperone on their dates. After we moved to Montreal, I would spend nearly every summer with them in New Brunswick. They were more like parents and treated me kindly.

He was a hardworking man. Most of his days were spent in the woods, cutting down trees and eventually selling the wood. I’m sure he did other jobs, but that is what I remember mostly about him.

He drank most of his life. It seemed most men in New Brunswick drank. My sister had to endure a lot. She had 3 small children, all born in 1966. It was like having triplets! He never trusted her or gave her much credit for what she did. Even though he drank, he was always good to me. I know he loved me and was very protective of
me. As I got older, I started to realize that my sister was not happy with the life she was living. At one point, he stopped drinking for 5 years, and things seemed much better, but then he started up again. The kids were grown up and living independently, so she decided he had to stop drinking, or she would leave him.

In 1997, she took a big step and left him. She moved to Montreal and lived with her daughter. Of course, he was unhappy about this, and he told her that he would kill himself if she didn’t return.

She didn’t return, and he continued to drink. Nearly 2 years later, she received a telephone call from her nephew in New Brunswick to say that he had found his uncle dead on the property where we grew up. He had committed suicide by hanging and shooting himself. I guess he didn’t want to take the chance of it not working, so he rigged it so that once he hung, the gun would go off. He didn’t have much education, but he was a very intelligent man. His engineering skills were amazing, and he
showed this right to the end.

I was torn with so many different emotions when I received the news. I had never lost someone so close to suicide. I felt sad that he could not fight this demon, which was Alcohol Addiction. I was angry that he left us the way he did. How could he do that? Did he not care? I felt sympathy for my sister because I knew she was dealing with guilt. If she would have returned to him, would this have happened? She spent many years having therapy, but I don’t know if, deep down inside, she still feels guilty. Maybe this is what he wanted? Then again, maybe this is what her soul needed to learn. This was planned between themselves before they came
to this earth. This was her soul’s plan!

After many years of going through the steps of Grief, I was able to Forgive. I forgave
him for everything he put us through. Now, I think of him as a loving soul who was here for a purpose. We can choose to feel angry, hurt, and burdened, or we can
recognize that experience, though painful, is a magnificent opportunity for enhanced self-understanding.

The person starts taking the drugs or alcohol, but
then the drugs or alcohol start taking the person.


Drug Addiction & Accidental Overdose

My niece died from a drug overdose on July 2nd, 2017. I don’t think it was a planned overdose. She had an 8-year-old son and had just been in a rehab centre. She was at a party, fell asleep and never woke up. I was told that she probably took the same amount of drug that she had been used to taking and that there might have been some Fentanyl added to it.

Fentanyl was the new go-to drug, and they were seeing many more overdose cases because of it. I also did not realize that this happens to many addicts after they come out of rehab. They have a relapse and take the same amount of drugs they always took, and their body cannot handle it.

She was a beautiful spiritual soul. She spoke to me often about our soul’s journey, how she believed in past lives and how we were put on this earth to spread LOVE! She had been on and off drugs for many years. She just couldn’t kick the habit. It
was a terrible loss, especially for her son. She was divorced from her husband, so her son went to live with his father after her death.

My sister had a love-hate relationship with her daughter. They were very alike in many ways. They both liked to party and get high. They would even go out partying together. My sister started taking drugs when she was in her teens. She wanted to be more of a friend to her daughter than being her mother. My sister took the loss
very hard. I can’t imagine the pain she was feeling. I’m sure there was a lot of guilt because she didn’t provide the guidance and discipline she needed when she was young. As parents, we all wish we could be their friends, but first, we must be their parents. Becoming friends comes much later in life!

I don’t think my sister ever got over her daughters death. When July 2nd came around, she would relive the night she died and become very depressed. My sister had many issues of her own. Her health had not been good for years, and she would get bursts of pain from TMJ (trigeminal neuralgia) in her face. She took cannabis along with many different prescription and non-prescription drugs. She had just witnessed what drugs could do, yet she didn’t hesitate to take them.
She was also an addict!

Drug Addiction & Suicide

My brother was another drug user. He got heavily into cocaine, and when he finally got off that crap, he became an alcoholic. Many addicts replace one addiction with another. After divorcing his wife and leaving his kids, he basically was left with
nothing to his name, so he moved to Florida to start a new life. His
addictions continued, and then he finally got help. He joined AA
(Alcoholics Anonymous) and was sober for years.

Still, he continued to ease his pain and depression with prescription drugs. He knew how to manipulate the medical system so that he would always have an extra supply of drugs. It used to kill me when my mother said that he was clean because he was no longer drinking. She was in denial for so many years, and he took advantage of
that. She also enabled him in so many ways. She was always there to pick him up when he got in trouble. It’s not easy letting your child hit rock bottom but it has to be done! By enabling them you are not doing them any favours!

I know he had back pain, but instead of trying to deal with it, he chose to numb it with medications, which, in effect, caused him depression, anxiety and resentment towards others. Like most addicts, it was everyone else’s fault!

Many of us tried to help him, and he did go to a rehab centre several times. It would look like there was hope, but then, when the pressure of everyday life took over, he would just go back to his old ways. When my mother went into a full-care senior’s home in 2015, she signed over her mobile home to him. I then took over her banking and realized that she had been supporting him. She could no longer do this! The little amount of money she had was needed for the nursing home. He was unhappy because he no longer had money to support his drug addiction and struggled to
keep up with the household expenses.

Eventually, on Oct 10th,2017, he took his own life. He shot himself!
I felt sad that he couldn’t fight this addiction, but I also felt relief that he was in a better place.

People with drug addictions gift us with the
chance to offer compassion.

This compassion was geared towards my mother. She loved him so much but that was not enough to save him from himself. My mom no longer had the same fight in her after my brother died. It was like part of her died too. She died 3 months later!

Drug Addictions & Depression

Part of my sister died when her daughter died. She really wasn’t strong enough to take all these family deaths. Her state of mind was not good. She always feared the worst. If she had a headache, then it must be brain cancer and so on. She was always in and out of the hospital. She had serious health issues, but I sometimes
wonder how much of it was caused by the drugs she was on.

Prescription drugs can save lives, but they can also cause death!
So many of these drugs are considered safe, yet they have many side effects. One of these side effects is suicidal thoughts! Unfortunately, many doctors don’t really know who they are prescribing these drugs to. So many people don’t have a clue what suicidal thoughts even mean. I only know because once, I took a medication that gave me these suicidal thoughts, but I knew enough to recognize what was happening and stopped taking them.

My sister died on July 3rd, 2021, 4 years after her daughter died. She was found lying down on her couch, the same way her daughter was found. They said she died of natural causes. She was only 68 years old! They never did any autopsy. If they
had done one, I’m sure they would have found many drug substances in her body. I believe she died of a broken heart with the assistance of drugs.

I have learnt so much from the loss of these loved ones. I deal with pain daily, and I can relate to how much easier it could be to just numb myself, but then I would miss out on so much.

Earth primarily serves the function of teaching us to let go of fear and love unconditionally. I am now able to say thank you. Thank you for caring enough about me to play a role in which you taught me so much. Thank you for keeping your promise and honoring our pre-birth contract.

Thank you for allowing me to go through what I had to go through to be the person I am today.