My brother died of an accidental drug overdose last month, he was 41 years old. When he died the attitude of a lot of people seems to be that this is what is expected when someone has been a heroin user most of their life, and it was choices he made that lead to his death so there is no one to blame for this but him. I have to admit that to me this felt almost inevitable given how he lived his life and part of me is angry that he let this happen.
Although he was once popular and well liked by the time he died he had few real friends left, some having died already or not been able to stay in contact with him in case it jeopardised their own attempts at staying off heroin. Some people just didn’t want to be around him anymore, by the time he was in his late 30s my brother was a very obvious drug user. If you met him you would probably label him as a ‘junkie’ straight away.
However he had managed to hold down a job and work most of his life. Although people knew about his drug addiction, they also knew he was a hard worker and respected him for that. He had some minor convictions for drug related crime although he had never been to prison or been convicted of a violent crime.
He openly admitted he had mental health problems, and was severely depressed. We knew that he spent his adult life trying and failing to beat his drug addiction and we tried to support him as best we could while not actually enabling him to continue taking drugs.
We had what you might call a ‘difficult’ childhood and my brother became a troubled teen, he didn’t do well at school, he got into fights and was involved with gangs, took party drugs, shoplifted etc. He and his friends were targeted by much older members of a county lines gang who introduced them to heroin, they all became addicts although many of them eventually got clean and went on to live normal lives.
When people ask how he died I sometimes lie and tell them the cause of death is ‘unexplained’ because telling them he died of a heroin overdose instantly labels him as a ‘junkie’ and in most people’s eyes a waste of space, undeserving of sympathy and respect, a person who’s life was worth nothing compared to someone who has bravely fought and lost their life to cancer or another more socially acceptable illness.
AIBU to believe that the death of my funny, kind and caring brother was a tragedy, that he was a person who was deeply depressed and damaged by a traumatic childhood, from the moment he was introduced to heroin he never really had a hope of beating drug addiction, although he tried. And that he didn’t deserve to live his life like this or to die.