Drinking and Gambling

LegacyUser

My brother has a problem with alcohol and gambling which he has managed to keep away from the family for a number of years. I am quite close to him so I knew about the problem well before any of the other members of my family.

I got a call from him asking to stay with me as there was a something wrong with his accommodation. I agreed but this roused some suspicion that there was something else wrong. So I did a bit of digging and he got let go from his job and has been evicted from his accommodation.

I live on my own and have a spare room and I know he will ask can he live with me until he gets back on his feet. The problem with this is that I know the extent of his drinking and gambling and he will use me as long as I let him. He has borrowed money from all the family (including myself) and has never paid it back.

I know that counselling will only work if the person wants to change but I don't think he is at this stage yet. So I am looking for anyone that has been in this type of situation and with hindsight knows how I should handle it. I'm not a bad person but I have to protect myself and with a bit of luck help him in the correct manner.

tenchi-fan

If you do let your brother take the spare room, ensure he gives you enough towards rent and bills. Make sure he buys his own food rather than pilfering yours. that way he will have nothing left to drink or gamble.

Make sure he knows that he is not welcome in your house if he is drunk.

You should also not attempt to keep this secret from your family, otherwise he will just use them if he cannot use you. There will be no point in you keeping him on the straight and narrow if your family are unintentionally undoing your work.

AA or gamblers anonymous would probably be worth looking into.

LegacyUser

If your brother is going to live with you I'd really recommend going to an AlAnon meeting or a Gamblers Anon meeting in order to hear the kind of things you may find yourself having to deal with. I've been through a similar situation and some of the things that came up were

- Stealing - addicts can plough through their own resources very quickly. Especially as your brother is a gambler make sure that you do not leave credit cards, bank cards, online banking details etc. anywhere he can access them. You may not think of your brother as someone who would steal from you but the compulsion to drink or gamble will be stronger than his sense of what's right.

- being too drunk to take care of your home - doors left open, keys left in locks, windows left open, cookers on, cigarettes not put out properly. Things broken in a drunken rage, things broken in fits of drunken clumsiness

- making your home somewhere you do not want to be. if your brother doesn't admit he has a problem and isn't getting help for it then he will continue to drink. You will become the person he is hiding it from (sort of like a parent figure). You will have to deal with being around him when he is hammered, being around him when he is sobering up and is in bits with guilt for what he has done, then being around him when that guilt turns into anger he wants someone to blame for how he is.

If he is going to live with you I would do 3 things, firstly tell your family that he has a problem, make sure that they are absolutely aware of what's happenign with him, that he lost his job and home because of what's happening. All too often people don't want to believe that their son/brother/cousin has a problem and you can end up looking like the bad guy if you have to take a hardline with him in the future

Secondly get yourself some support, find an Al Anon meeting or an addiction counsellor you can see.

Thirdly, have a talk with your brother where you lay out the rules for living in your home. Be very unembarrassed about the things you bring up, he needs to know that you believe he has a problem, that you know what happens with people in the same situations and that you will not tolerate certain things in your home. He'd be getting the same kind of talk if he was going into a residential programme for his addictions. He won't mean to take advantage of your kindness/softness but he will try to do so and you need to be ready for it and be an absolute hardass if he crosses the line.

Best of luck OP

LegacyUser

Thanks BeenThereBefore. That's some good advice. I will follow your steps and take it day by day.

LighterGuy

Drinking and gambling is always a bad combo.
when your drunk, you gamble more, you loose more.

First thing your brother should do is seperate the both. Things will be easier to give up fully then.