I used to be a hardcore tweeker but have been off it for 5 years now.
Anyway, my out of state brother has been flaking out bad for at least
2 years now.  He had a good job and our parents BOUGHT him both a
nice condo which he pays no rent on AND a nice car which he doesn't
have to make payments on.  I should probably mention that he has
AIDS, but is covered by both the county AIDS assistance program and
company health insurance (or was until he lost his job several
months ago), so the cost of his medical treatment isn't a factor.

Anyway, the problem is that despite having a fairly well-paying job
and virtually no expenses in the form of rent and car, he was
ALWAYS broke and bumming money off our parents.  Almost every week
he was phoning to beg for yet another check for several hundred
dollars.  He even got himself arrested last year after getting
stopped for expired license plates.  It seems that although my
father bought him that nice car about 8 months before, he never
bothered to register it and simply put his old plates on it.  So
when he was pulled over he not only had expired plates, but also
falsely represented plates, AND several unpaid traffic tickets
that had all gone to warrant, AND no insurance!!!  So my parents
paid his bail, wired him $1000 for the fine that the court would
impose with the expectation that he would return the balance if
the fine was less.  The fine was $180 but rather than return the
remaining $820 my brother KEPT IT without permission then had the
balls to phone a week later to beg for even more money!  Of course
he had absolutely no logical explanation for how $820 evaporated
in a week.

And that was all last year.  This year he lost his nice job after
calling in "sick" about 10,000 times too often.  So my parents
paid his car insurance, stocked his pantry with hundreds of
dollars of groceries, and sent him probably a few thousand dollars
in checks.  Then his electricity got cut off (again) so my parents
phoned in a credit card payment to have it turned back on.  Then
his phone got cut off (again) and once again my parents paid to
have it reconnected.  Several weeks ago his phone bill was due so
my parents sent him a check to cover it.  You guessed it, he
didn't pay it and now has no telephone!  There is a $50 reconnect
charge and he is using the more expensive "alternative" local
phone company service that caters to people with bad credit
because he owes several hundred dollars to the regular phone
company that disconnected him for nonpayment several years ago.
And I won't even mention the flock of creditors after him for
what we estimate to be at least $10,000 in unpaid bills.

He called tonight from a friend's house (he "lost" the 3 phone
cards my father sent him just a few weeks ago) begging for more
money again.  My mother pressed him until he finally broke down
and admitted he was on crystal meth.  He claims he's been using
it just since this New Year's, but I know he's used it off and
on for at least 10 years, in fact he was the one who turned me
on to it the first time.  I've been telling our parents I knew
he was on either meth or crack or heroin or all of them at
once.  Then of course he smokes at least a 1/4oz of pot a week
($50) plus 2 packs of cigarettes a day ($45/week).  And almost
every night of the week he is down at the goddamn gay bar
buying $5 drinks for all his so-called "friends."

I estimate that his drug dealer has now gotten $20,000 of our
parents' money and the gay bar another $20-$30,000, not to
mention another $20,000 for the convenience store in cigarette
sales.  And this doesn't include his salary he spent on these
things before he lost his job.  And we all know that the county
taxpayers haven't received a dime in compensation for the AIDS
treatment they so generously provide to him and his fellow
HIV+ idiots free of charge.

So we don't know what to do with him.  The AIDS program offers
free "counseling" but it is probably nothing more than chanting
communist propaganda slogans at him about how it's all Ronald
Reagan's and Newt Gingrich's fault.  Professional rehab doesn't
seem acceptable to me, as they "treat" you until the day your
insurance or savings run out then pronounce you "cured" and
kick you out.  Then it is very difficult to separate the legit
rehab programs from the Jeezus and Scientology scams.

I've been suggesting hiring a professional cult deprogrammer.
I have noticed that my brother almost appears to be in a sort
of cult, the cult of the gay community.  When he talks he
rants a bunch of leftist politics and raves about the gay
community and gay bar.  To him the gay bar is the absolute
center of the f.cking universe.  And to him the local gay rag
(The Bugle) is holy scripture.  Try to imagine a gay Karl Marx
on crystal meth and you're close.  And while I consider Rush
Limbaugh to simply be a fat drug-addicted windbag, to my
brother he represents Satan Incarnate.  In all, I consider his
strange behavior and beliefs to be very cultish, calling for
the drastic measure of professional deprogramming (I think the
standard deprogramming technique is to kidnap the cultist,
take him to a Holiday Inn suite, and dunk his head in the toilet
while chanting propaganda slogans at him until he renounces his
beliefs).

When I quit meth cold turkey in 1999 it took a full year before
the cravings (really incessant thoughts about doing it) went
away, then just as I got over the cravings I went crazy,
presumably due to the dopamine imbalance caused by the meth, and
had to go on the antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

Anyway, that's the story if any of you care.  I still maintain
my libertarian position that adults have a right to use any
drugs they want.  But that doesn't mean drugs don't cause
problems.  I still defend marijauna, no one ever had their lives
ruined from smoking pot, despite what the government propaganda
tries to make us believe.  I also support hallucinogens like
LSD and psilocybin, though my brother flipped out from LSD after
it reacted with his AIDS medication (we think) and had to be
hauled off to the loony bin in a straightjacket.  It was rather
funny at the time, as he was ranting and raving about how the
government was trying to wipe out AIDS by killing all the gays
and thought they were burning West Hollywood and actually drove
all the way to California to try to stop the massacre.  By the
time he got there he was so disoriented all he could do was
phone my father to come pick him up.

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"Drugs should be freely distributed.  That way the people who want to
kill themselves will do it, leaving more room for the people who can
do the rest of the drugs."
-- Marilyn Manson
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