Every junkie's like a setting sun...

One day, when I was a senior in high school, I received a phone call from my brother. He told me he was at a treatment facility outside of Nashville and that he didn't belong there and that all of the people there were junkies and criminals and he was going to just walk out if someone did not come to get him.

I was stunned.. I had no idea my brother had any kind of drug problem, much less the kind that would put him in a treatment facility, voluntary or otherwise. Moments after I agreed to go get him, his longtime girlfriend called the house bawling, begging me not to go get him, telling me that he had a problem and that he needed to get help. I was in a hard spot. I had already told him I'd come get him, so I couldn't very well renege, but Liz was desperate. There was no doubt in my mind that she did not want him to come home, but I could not let him just walk out of the facility. I just pictured him wandering around the filthy streets of Nashville with junkies and criminals. It was with that image that I called my best friend, David, and told him I needed him to come with me to go pick him up. 

When we go there, it became VERY clear to me that I should not have been so worried about the junkies and criminals in Nashville. The place was in the middle of the forest. I am sure, at this point, that he was bluffing and I fell for it. And I think about that every time he goes on a bender.

Sunday night Liz found Jason's stash of Somas in the spare bedroom of their house. She told him that she found them and instead of responding like a normal person, he got really angry with her. He acted as though she were snooping through his belongings or like she was holding his vital organs or something, and that wasn't the case at all. She simply noticed he was acting stupid, watching him wander around the house, and then checked the spare bedroom after he left it. She wasn't even that suspicious until she saw one pill on the floor. When she found the rest of them, and he got angry at her, she flushed them all down the toilet. 

My brother, high off his ass, ripped the toilet off the floor, threw Liz into the bathtub, and was going to hit her with the shower curtain rod until she snatched it out of his hands. She called my mom and we rushed down to their house to help.

Helping ended up being me pinning him to the floor over and over again because he kept trying to rush us, kept trying to run away, and then kept crying that Liz had flushed "a hun...a hun....a hundred....hundred dollars......." in somas down the toilet. And I am gonna tell you right now, if I did not outweigh my brother by a hundred pounds, I'd never have been able to keep him still. It was incredibly difficult as it was because he is taller and stronger than I am. My weight and sobriety were my only advantages, and you better believe I used them. I was so scared he was going to hurt one of us. As it was, at least twice I was afraid I was going to dislocate his shoulder because he kept struggling and trying to twist out of my grip. I told him over and over that I'd let him go if he'd just sit down and be cool, but he wasn't having it. Whenever I let him go, he'd start running for the door or for Liz. At one point, my mom and Liz were holding him, but he kept pinching my mom and kicking at Liz. I went over and held his legs and finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he passed out. 

The next day I felt like I had been beat up. You cannot imagine how difficult it is to wrestle a grown ass man (unless, of course, you are a wrestler) and I could hardly lift my arms over my head. My hands were sore from gripping his wrists, the muscles on my sides hurt from twisting back and forth every time he'd trying to shake me. And at some point, I managed to obtain the following bruise on my elbow:

That was taken the day after, and I know it doesn't look that bad, but this is what it looked like yesterday:

So yeah, it was just getting warmed up.

And if you think my little elbow bruise is ugly, you should've seen the ones on my brother's wrists and shoulders. The ones on his wrists were definitely from me, and they made me sick to see them. It disgusted me to know that I could do that to a person. The ones on his shoulders are from when he was stumbling into the walls, and they both looked as bad as his shoulder did when he broke his collarbone a few years ago. I wanted to take pictures of his bruises, but then felt it would be really scavenger-y of me to do so.

All week, whenever I see him, my brother will pull his sleeve up to look at his bruises, shake his head in mild awe, and then say, "Man, don't no chick wanna mess with Kashmir."

And I wonder if it would've happened at all if I had left him there that day.