A Life Unraveling

My brother's life right now could be the story of what is wrong with mental health care in the U.S. today. The quickest backstory ever... 20 years ago, he was diagnosed as Bipolar II. Sure, there are lots of details, but the bottom line is that for the past 20 years, up until October of last year, he was living a fairly quiet life with a mental illness. He never held a full time job, but he managed to finish a couple of vocational programs, and start several others, and even managed to get married last August (egads, that is certainly another story, and even kind of funny). He was never a menace to society, or made his loved ones fear for their own safety (and his).

Until he found the DRUGS. Mind you, he was taking medications for his bipolar that allowed him to be the person he was up until he found these DRUGS. Now, we're not entirely sure what he has been taking, and apparently, they are legal, but very dangerous. He orders them online, with some of them coming from China. What little I know is that some are "research" drugs that are hallucinogenic. The other drug that he says he has taken is mephedrone, which is also known as "plant food". It is apparently highly addictive, and very dangerous. With a brain already chemically imbalanced by mental illness, these drugs must only be even more dangerous (conjecture on my part).

When he discovered these DRUGS, "N" began systemically destroying everything. His brain, his marriage, his ability to function, and his relationship with his family. He has become extremely paranoid, and when he isn't in the hospital detoxing, he takes the drugs, and then calls police because he thinks people are trying to get him. He built barricades in his apartment out of the furniture, and this last time out, he had amassed quite the gun collection. Of course, the hospitals can't release him knowing there are guns, so my mother has removed the guns each time. Sometimes she has sold them, but the last time, after he scared her with threats and harassment, she put them back in his truck which was at her house. So Monday, she removed them again, and has promised me that it's the last time she will, and as far as she knows, he's out of the hospital. He doesn't know where the guns are, or where my mother is. Seriously, though, a 71 year old woman should not have to hide from her son to feel safe.

He has been in the hospital more days in the last 6 months than out of the hospital, including one time in intensive care, strapped to the bed. He has had seizures. None of the stays have been longer than 7 days except for the intensive care time, and 3 weeks at a rehab facility, where he signed himself out AMA. He is in desperate need of long term residential treatment, but that's not the way it works these days. He is unwilling to seek out patient treatment of any kind.

This is a tragic story. I fear that it can't have a happy ending.