My Brother's Heroin Addiction Destroyed Our Family .

My family has a lot of pride, not in the family life itself – but to each their own selfish way. One in which never allows us to lower our guard or drop the ego. It is a constant battle for survival. I don't know exactly when it started, but is has transgressed into an unstoppable force. And I seriously believe I am the only sane one of the bunch.

I know you're supposed to love your family members and have a high form of camaraderie towards each other – but the truth is, we never did. Maybe when I was 5 and my sister fought off the neighborhood bully - but even then it was because my older brother just stood there while I literally hung off a cliff.

That's one of the only times I can honestly think of that we stuck up for one another.

And this is also coming from someone who is a twin. You hear all kinds of twin stories of how they're best friends and are inseparable. Not us though – growing up consisted of daily battles. We were forced to fight as well, even when we didn't want to. Our older brother would often get us together when his friends were over and push us together until we fought, many times even handing us boxing gloves and make us go at it. Looking back though I don't blame my parents, even thought they got divorced and all that fun stuff. I put the blame solely on one person - the older brother.

I ended up living with him for several years, a couple of those years he was a heroin addict.

I can recall my “stuff” just disappearing around those times and it never made sense to me until years later. Electronics would disappear and basically anything that I hadn't used for a while would vanish. I remember one day I went to play with my paintball gun and the entire bag of guns and parts just mysteriously walked away. Even video games I got for Christmas were gone by Valentines day.

When I was a senior high school, I ran into my uncle one day during my last class of the day. He was guest speaking for a club event after school and was to be held in the classroom I was at. He showed up too early. And he's the type of uncle I only see about 2 or 3 times a year at holidays. So it was very odd that I saw him that day. I also didn't know this would be the last time I would ever see him. And his last words to me I'll never forget.

“I just wanted to let you know – I heard what your brother did to you and that's really f#cked up and he's a real piece of shit.”

He had tears in his eyes. What he was referring to was that he caught word through my dad that I had worked all summer long and was saving my paychecks. I had 1-1/2 months of work in un-cashed checks that my brother stole out of my drawer to buy dope. Within a week after I saw my uncle he was dead from liver failure. He was an addict of his own flavor. Everyone in my family had heard I got to see him before he died but I was never able to tell them what we talked about that day.

A couple years after and I was at the time living with this brother, and his addiction. Meanwhile It's never talked about but he knows I'm aware of his problem. He never would get high in front of me at least - I'll give him that. Well one day in particular I was taking a nap after work. And he had a friend over so they could get high together and play my video games, the ones he liked. I must have been asleep for 20 minutes and I woke up to yelling:

"Call 911! Hurry! CALL 911!" I ran out of the bedroom expecting it to be on fire.

The friend of my brother had overdosed and was turning blue.

"Quick! help me get him into the bath tub! He's burning up! No, CALL 911!"

It was some of the scariest moments of my life. And of course when the ambulance and police arrived I had to do the talking. I told them I didn't know what was going on and that I just woke up to this. But the cop wasn't buying it.

"I need to know what you guys were doing! Were there drugs involved?!"

I'm staring at the ground in disbelief that I have to go through this and I look up.

"I just woke up to this, I don't know what happened!"

The EMT treated the friend and he slowly came to. But the cops were pissed and everyone knew foul play was involved. Eventually they bought the story that he must have had a seizure while playing the video games.

This event was never mentioned again and we sort of just moved along. The only thing my brother did was be more careful of who he got high with.

I didn't have a car at the time either. So I would usually depend on this brother or my friends to get around. One night in particular was a cold, wintry night. My friends dropped me off late. There was snow on the ground and I came back to the door locked. I didn't have a key to the dead bolt. Only my brother did, but it was never used. And of course this was the one night my phone was dead. I think he didn't want me in there to see him high. Either that or he had overdosed.

I tried knocking on the back window but it was no use.

I eventually gave up as it was 2:30 in the morning and didn't want the cops called.. again. And because of our family pride I couldn't let any of the neighbors know that we.. "had problems."

So I spent a very memorable night in the woods behind our apartment.

I tried to use a tree stump as a pillow, but eventually accepted I wasn't sleeping that night.

I was meant to remember it.

I ended up just pacing around and sitting on a log for hours, as the ground was too cold to be on. So I just sat there and thought how I need to change things to get away from the worst influence in my life. It was around 7am that I finally went back and knocked on the door. He opened it and didn't look at me - we both just went back to our bedrooms and closed our doors.

The next day my mother picked me up with a laundry basket full of clothes and I was out of there.

A couple weeks later he ended up in rehab. But the damage was already done and there was no rehab for our relationship.

Still to this day I look at him with different eyes.

Not that I'm unforgiving - I just can't forget. Because it wasn't just what he did to me , but what he put my family through.. basically our whole lives and in so many ways. To this day, even though he's clean, I still see a resemblance of that... person. The personality doesn't change, and the addiction just changes form. I'm happy in knowing I'm nothing like him and when I see any resemblance of him in me, I f#cking change it.

• Larry