Do you have any family members whose lives went totally off the rails?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what do you all do? how much are you helping the siblings whose lives went off the rails? Especially when they had advantages but didn't listen or chose to be manipulative?

Not helping at all

Same. I've washed my hands of it. You can't help people who don't want to be helped.

[Anonymous]

Both of my siblings: we were UMC (lived in another state), went to excellent schools, lots of family and extended family support, had pretty good parents, nice community.

Sibling 1: dropped out of a 4 year college her first year bc of drinking problem. Moved back in with my parents. Went to community college (nothing wrong with that), but couldn't finish to get her nursing degree so became a nursing assistance. My parents bought her a house. She had bad relationship after bad relationship with bad men, all allowing them to move in with her and pretty soon the house was trashed. Got pregnant, told current boyfriend it was his, he seemed excited. When she gave birth it was clear the baby was biracial and then the boyfriend demanded a paternity test (which proved it wasn't his). I mean there's a lot more (including addition, begging me for money, another kid), but she's just lived a life like a Maury Povich episode.

My other sibling kept failing out of college (4 yrs and community college), can't keep a job because apparently every single manager he has had is "really mean" and it causes him too much anxiety to work. So he plays video games all day. He is an occasion gig worker for grub hub. He also lives in a house my parents own and it is more trashed than my sister's house.

[Anonymous]

My brother in law owned a popular restaurant. He then got into an altercation with a customer, shot at them (didn't hit them), evaded police and went to federal prison

[Anonymous]

My friend in college was a full scholarship brilliant chemistry major at a T25 from a rural small town who met a spoiled rich kid student who was into drugs and guns but just a poser really. She developed a heroin addiction and blew through her money and dropped out. Her poor parents were so confused but managed to get her into rehab and I think she was able to to finish at state school and stay clean but lost all her friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what do you all do? how much are you helping the siblings whose lives went off the rails? Especially when they had advantages but didn't listen or chose to be manipulative?

NP - I tried to help my sister relatively early in her course of addiction. But in the last five or so years she refuses any (asked for) advice, is supported largely by our parents, and is often hostile towards me. So I do very little to help her. I know her brain’s a mess at this point, so I don’t entirely blame her for the way she is, but I’m also not going to set myself on fire to keep her warm.

[Anonymous]

Yes I did. Job loss that lead to way too much binge drinking to treat underlying anxiety. Ended up with a 10 day stint in jail for a DUI.

Person pulled it together and now has a great job and is really settled in a terrific place in life. It was a pretty big dip there for about 5 years though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. And then eventually they made a different lives for themselves. That includes me. I had to quit my job at a critical time in career to look after my firstborn with special needs. Killed my career.

same here

[Anonymous]

Two siblings - both addicitions. One's struggle started in their teens but the other's alcoholism didn't kick in (seemingly) until their 30's.

Spent waaaaaay too much time trying to help and it was wasted energy that took a huge toll on me.

Now I'm fairly distant from both and I'm much healthier as a result.

Lots of cousins w/ addiction and mental illness struggles also. Seems like we have a strong genetic propensity towards it in our family. There's me and one other cousin who have managed to have solid marriages, kids, careers, and a reasonably stable life but we are very much the minority.

[Anonymous]

Yup, my brother. An academic golden child, valedictorian, near perfect boards, handsome and fit, went Ivy League. I was younger than him, and had teachers who had held onto his projects for years to show them as an example of student work. He managed to graduate but came home full of rage and probably a mental illness, and never left. Lives in squalor in his room at my parents house, now age 44, never had a job, is an alcoholic, obese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yup, my brother. An academic golden child, valedictorian, near perfect boards, handsome and fit, went Ivy League. I was younger than him, and had teachers who had held onto his projects for years to show them as an example of student work. He managed to graduate but came home full of rage and probably a mental illness, and never left. Lives in squalor in his room at my parents house, now age 44, never had a job, is an alcoholic, obese.

Similar story here. I wonder how many of these people have an underlying mental illness and are academically gifted. My brother was 98th percentile on SATs, 95th on GMAT, ivy league---but never learned to work hard b/c it all came to him, and therefore didn't have the skills to do "hard".

[Anonymous]

What are the lessons to learn here? 🤔
Try to catch and treat mental illness early
Some people shouldn't own guns
Peer group and partners is huge
What else

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are the lessons to learn here? 🤔
Try to catch and treat mental illness early
Some people shouldn't own guns
Peer group and partners is huge
What else

-Most people shouldn't own guns
-If you are going through a hard time, don't rely on drugs and alcohol to make you feel "better"

[Anonymous]

Yes, my SIL. Favorite child and only girl, special and close relationship w my MIL (lots of fancy spa weekends, concert trips, dinners out), and she also had the first and favorite grandchild who could never be told "no" to anything she wanted.

Ended up addicted to opioid painkillers which led to massive overspending and lying about why to continue to get massive $ bailouts from doting/enabling ILs.

For a long time my ILs would just laugh off how impulsive and vivacious she is, then when things went steadily downhill they fretted that no one had ever had as hard a life as SIL. Then they eventually realized that she was playing them and they were angry and hurt, but continue to bail her out; recently literally bailed her out after she was arrested for theft.

SIL is very pretty and charming and can make you feel like you're her favorite person ever when she's talking to you. I have a hard time feeling any more empathy for her at this point because it's been almost two decades of lies and manipulation that she will never have the personal insight to ever experience any kind of remorse for.

Sadly, there are even worse things that I can't write here because they are too easy to identify. I have tried to have compassion for her, but her recklessness has made it difficult. Helping her financially would be wasteful because I don't think there will ever be enough money to outpace her problems.

We live far away from her. My H keeps in touch with her and worries about her. I tried to keep in touch but have learned over the years that she is only interested in communicating if she needs something from me. I talk to her at family gatherings at the same chit chat level that I would use with a stranger in line with me at the grocery store.

It will be interesting to see what happens when my inlaws die; I think there will be an inheritance that should be enough to support her reasonably for the rest of her life, but my guess is that she will blow through it like a jackpot winner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What are the lessons to learn here? 🤔
Try to catch and treat mental illness early
Some people shouldn't own guns
Peer group and partners is huge
What else

Not some, more like 99%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what do you all do? how much are you helping the siblings whose lives went off the rails? Especially when they had advantages but didn't listen or chose to be manipulative?

NP - I tried to help my sister relatively early in her course of addiction. But in the last five or so years she refuses any (asked for) advice, is supported largely by our parents, and is often hostile towards me. So I do very little to help her. I know her brain’s a mess at this point, so I don’t entirely blame her for the way she is, but I’m also not going to set myself on fire to keep her warm.

I have a sibling whose brain is also a mess from addiction. They’re incoherent, have strange memories, delusions, get basic information mixed up, very sad.