My brother is a meth addict.
He's been an addict in one way or another for years. He lives mostly on the streets, sleeps on people's couches and eats in shelters. Recently, he's been staying with a woman who is also a meth addict. Neither of them work. They sleep all day, they're up all night. They watch movies, they smoke cigarettes, they smoke meth, they eat food sometimes.
Sometimes when they have fights, which tends to be often for drug addicts, she tries to run him over with her mustang. Or she drives up on my mom's front yard and honks her horn over and over again looking for him.
My poor mother. She calls me, telling me these stories and honestly we have to laugh because she calls the cops. And she's afraid she might be on "Cops" one of these days. I sing the theme song to her on the phone sometimes.
It's an ugly addiction and oddly, we've all sort of grown accustomed to it. We let him into our lives during holidays and sometimes birthdays when we celebrate at my mom's house. He lingers always near my mom's residence during these times, waiting. And all his nieces and nephews adore him. Funky Unckie they call him. They wait for him to show up.
I learned years ago not to get mixed up in his dealings. There was a time when I thought I was helping; driving him around, picking up his friends, taking him to court, bailing him out from jail, searching for him on the streets, waiting for him to show up, giving him money. Now he doesn't call me anymore. There's only one place I will take him if he calls me and he knows that. Whenever I see him I tell him I'm waiting.
He was the one, out of my siblings, who everyone thought would be the one to succeed in many ways. He was brilliant, a magical athlete, a gifted student, a witty sense of humor, a skate punk who always had the girls laughing and wanting to be near him.
But he had his demons and they slowly took over after he finished high school. He spent some time in Santa Barbara in college, but ended up mostly surfing and growing pot and coming back after a few years. For a while he maintained and worked and drove his bus around. He always had a nomadic way about him. Never really staying in one place long enough, meeting people along the way, having a good time.
Every 8 months or so, he'd come back to my mom's house and shut himself in. He'd sit in his room for hours in the dark, sleep for hours, go out for walks. He'd detox from the world. He never asked for help. He wanted to do it himself he always said. He'd stay for a few months and then set off again. This cycle happened 4 or 5 times during his 20's.
And then the meth found him. He disappeared completely for a few months, living in his van, spending all the money he'd saved up and doing speed and tweaking.
For years it's gone on now. And we've tried to help in many ways. Rehab stints, interventions, long discussions, counseling, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, blah, blah, blah.
Once it almost worked. The rehab helped for a while. He followed the program. He was clean for 2 years in between. He was real again. Full of promise and excitement and that witty sense of humor came back. There was clarity. But slowly he slipped back in.
I still see small bits of his clarity sometimes. We've had long conversations about his demons. And always during those clear times I ask if he's ready to come out again. He's never in denial. He knows his demons well. He knows he's an addict. And I still believe he's not past the point of no return yet. But he feels he is.
About a year ago he spent some time in jail. He wrote me a letter. His head was clear. His understanding of things was deeper then I could ever wish for, for myself. I saw that he still had the gift of writing. I tell him that whenever I see him. Write it down and send it to me in the mail, I tell him. But he's too busy smoking his drug, leaving a trail of destruction behind him.
And yet the one other constant thing for him all these years has been his bike.
He's always had a bike of some sort. Pieced together from parts off of old trashed bikes from the streets or from dumpsters. I've seen him in the alley with skeleton bikes laying all around him, tweaking hard, piecing his bike together. I bring him new tubes every few months. In November I brought him some long fingered gloves and a pump. He mentioned that the gas station pumps were a pain. The pump is kept right outside my mom's garage now.
Last year he got arrested for riding his bike in the dark, while holding a flashlight and in "possession". They took his bike. But within a few weeks he'd pieced together a new one. For Christmas last year, Morgan and I gave him a light for his bike.
He's one of those scrappy looking guys you see in any downtown, riding this bike in his jeans and a sweater while eating a sandwich and smoking a cigarette.
And he's also the one who helped me buy my first Gary Fisher mountain bike 16 years ago at Hank & Franks back in the day. And afterwards we drove over to Marin in his bus with the bikes thrown in the back and he took me on my first mountain bike ride, ever.
