Connection

“If you go over, I’ll have to dump your body.”

The man who injected my sixteen-year-old brother’s vein with heroin spoke these bleak words without even looking at him as he demonstrated how to tie the cord around his forearm. Jason was just a frightened teenager looking to escape the demons in his mind. The dealer promised the perfect solution. Already an alcoholic, this was my brother’s first intravenous hit.

“I knew it was what I was looking for,” Jason told me when I first suggested writing his story. “It was what I needed to make everything go away.”

This was the start of his full-blown affair with narcotics of every description, which fueled the downward spiral of his mental health. And having disappeared down the tunnel of addiction, this prevented the real source of his problems from being understood until it eventually became an almost impossible task.

He still reminisces sometimes, his eyes full of regret and sorrow, “Taking heroin was beautiful.”

Jason strikes a sorry note at first glance with his gaunt, gangly body personifying an addled druggie. If you kindly give him the time of day, though, he’ll happily engage you in conversation and I guarantee your first impressions will be changed. Underneath the wreck you’ll find a kind, polite and intelligent man. If you get to know him you’ll discover his even deeper qualities. My brother is naturally creative and very talented, although his aspirations of ever becoming an artist now lie in ruins.

Jason - man sitting on chair with drink in hand — Jason

Yet despite everything he’s been through he still remains at heart the sensitive, caring person he always was as a child. He has never hurt anyone and he is a good man, if fragile. He’ll wait for your look of approval anxiously, even more so for your disdain if, having heard the strange stories he tells, you resign him to life’s dustbin of broken souls.

I want people to know that he’s not mad. My brother craves understanding and still longs to find a purpose for his life. He still strives to beat addiction and connect with others. Importantly, he wants his story told so he can help to prevent others from descending down the same dark and fruitless escape tunnel to tame life’s turmoil.

In Jason’s life there is always a conundrum to solve first before you even begin to understand him. When he suddenly declares something unbelievable, like he’s been haunted by something paranormal since childhood, most outsiders will almost certainly conclude, understandably, that he’s crazy. Even professional care workers have been guilty of this.

Fair enough, when it comes to exploring the origin of his problems it’s impossible for an outsider to discern fact from fiction. Only because we shared our childhood can I begin describing the facts behind his claims – and there are some undeniable ones to consider, backing up his stories about a paranormal influence in his life. The facts aren’t easy to digest and, to many, could well sound like fantasy. But this story is my brother’s reality, it’s what he perceives as well as what really happened in early life.

At the age of four, when Jason first stepped into our mysterious new home, he insists that he immediately saw a paranormal entity standing by the fireplace. Was he already mentally ill, or did he turn to alcohol and drugs in order to find an escape from this and the other visions that torment him? On the other hand, was it the drug abuse that scrambled his later memories, exacerbating his mental health struggles to the point where he only narrowly avoided an untimely death?

Jason has willingly shared his perspective when he’s lucid and I’ve listened with consideration and an open mind as his brother and carer, despite my own agnosticism. By connecting with him, I’ve gained a new perspective and insight into many addiction issues and causes, as well as the woes of the mental health care system. Jason has also opened my mind to the possibility that the paranormal has indeed played a part in his decline.

Shamefully, I admit that I failed to understand and connect with my brother during his early years of addiction, and my lack of connection almost resulted in losing him forever. It wasn’t until he was in his early twenties that I’d grasped, with a deep sense of guilt, the true extent of his situation. That was when I connected with him fully and tried to help, heartbroken that I’d been so blind to his problems. I increasingly became the backbone of his support and embarked upon a journey to discover him afresh. And as I shared my chapters with him, Jason would shake his head incredulously when he considered the self-abuse he’s miraculously survived over four decades, despite close calls along the way.

Even now, I find it hard to comprehend my own inability to spot my brother’s deeper problems. Yet isn’t this a common fact? How many others pass beneath the radar of friends and family without support, facing a lifetime of endless struggle as they spiral further into addiction?

Noticing that there is a problem is the first step to helping someone on this downward path. Acknowledgement is the first act of connection, ownership and action are next, because there’s an abject lack of professional support and understanding for people in mental health crisis. It’s not just resources, there’s a far too common lack of empathy by some professionals. My brother has often been treated with indifference, as I can testify having attended care meetings with him, and this disconnect only pushed him deeper into addiction.

Jason’s story is about human understanding, something many of us are still not very good at. But unless we attempt to understand what seems unimaginable to those of us living ‘normal’ lives, we will never truly be able to help anyone who’s suffering mentally. Without connection we’re all lost, yet connection is a simple resource that can help prevent addiction and mental decline taking the reins. It’s not easy, but we all have to try harder.

People often trivialise their reasons for drug use. Some enjoy the euphoria and superficial bravado, some use the serenity certain drugs provide like a life jacket to endure anything life throws at them. This was certainly true of Jason, but there are generally underlying reasons for addiction buried deep within someone.

My brother had his very unique reasons but fundamentally the story of addiction follows the same trajectory. A disconnected person needing to escape will find a way to do it and, before too long, they’re trapped between the uncontrollable craving and the increasing mental turmoil it provides. Addiction decimates the mind. The responsibility we have as caring human beings is to look out for tell-tale signs that someone may be in mental health crisis. Connection’s an accessible resource everyone can learn to use. Connection from one understanding human being to another who’s struggling is powerful; it could prevent someone from pursuing the same futile route as my brother.

For example, one of my brother’s care workers did take the time to understand him. During several meetings he noted, despite Jason’s abundant drug and alcohol use, that he also had a deep distrust of sugar and additives. Sounds preposterous, I know. One day, the care worker saw the can of eleven percent cider poking from Jason’s pocket.

“That’s a can of chemicals and sugar, Jason. Try real cider.” This simple connection and understanding of my brother’s foibles led to Jason halving his alcohol intake within two months.

When I asked my brother why he’d hidden his mental health problems so carefully as a youngster, he replied with confounded regret.

“I’d convinced myself no-one would ever understand if I said anything. Sorry, brother. How do you make someone understand something you don’t understand yourself? I didn’t know where to begin and I was terrified of being taken away from home and being sectioned or something.”

Yes, the sad reality of life is that we’re all too often tangled in our own agendas. Frankly, it’s too easy to ignore the signs. Jason became a reclusive teenager and hardly spoke, hiding in his room with his music on loud. This sounds so typical, it’s easy to dismiss as normal behavior. Had I been more mindful and enlightened then, I’d have connected with him better and supported him sooner. If I sound like I’m over-simplifying this, I’m not, it’s hard and it often feels like an impossible task without any likely reward. Connection requires commitment, but it will bear fruit from a seed sowed by caring for another.

While writing this book, it was sometimes challenging finding the right times to connect with Jason. On good days, I was gifted by him emerging like the sensitive child I remembered, pleading that he’s always told the truth about his experiences. The simple act of sitting and listening always helped to coax him from his chemical fog and face reality, providing obvious calmness for him.
Connection works.

My elderly neighbour and I had a rare conversation one morning out of the blue. He remembered that I liked writing and walked over to tell me that he was writing a short play about his struggles with the side effects of prostate cancer treatment.

“Nothing will probably ever happen with it,” he laughed wryly.

However, I was full of encouragement and told him to pursue it, writing from the heart is powerful, I said. It was tangible how cathartic it had become for him. A short while later a twelve-page script flopped through my letterbox, with a handwritten note at the top.

‘My play is being performed on the radio at the end of the month and in a local theatre. Thought I’d share it.’

It moved me. He’d written his play to help others understand. And now I do understand the issues he faces daily, which I also now share with others. So in its own beautiful way, connection helps us all.

Marc Graham King’s memoir about his brother’s struggles with addiction, He’s Not Mad, He’s My Brother, has won the national Spiritual Writing Competition in the UK. It is a searingly honest, yet loving and compassionate account of their upbringing. Marc is a passionate advocate for his brother and reaches out to all of us to be more thoughtful and caring towards those with mental health issues.