Patrick Kuehner ©✝️🏵

I have a story about addiction from a different perspective. A story where recovery was not possible. I have one sibling. An older brother. Everyone loved him. It was easy to love him. He died 10 years ago. It was a horrible death that took him 20 years to accomplish, dragging everyone who loved him along the way. He was an amazing musician. He didn't read music. No lessons. Hand him any instrument, and he can play it. He had a big heart. He was easily the funniest person I've ever known. And he is the only other human being who speaks fluent movie-script-quotes with precision and skill. But alcohol took over in his mid-20s. Bam Margera is just 2 years younger than my brother. He reminds me of my brother *so* much. Everything Bam and his family went through with his addiction is what my brother and family went through. My brother left high school because he was a gifted songwriter and musician. Bam left because he was a gifted skater. My brother was really into editing and producing films, and so is Bam. When Ryan Dunn died, and Bam went off the deep end, I was watching my brother do the same thing every time a strong emotion hit him, and he simply didn't know what to do with it. My brother was so beautiful on the outside, yet unrecognizable at the end. I can not tell you how many times my brother would go missing. Hundreds of times. He would sometimes go missing for up to a week. Then we'd get a call from the police or a hospital. Usually, the hospital would be first because he'd be near death. Then they would keep him on a 5150 at a mental health facility. Then he would come home. One time, he chased me with a knife in his hand, screaming he was going to kill me as I was running out of my parents' home on a cordless phone dialing 911. I found a fifth of vodka in his room and poured it down the drain. He went looking for it 20 minutes later, and it was empty...and I told him I poured it out. When I was 24 years old, I landed my first job that came with an office. My name was outside of it. I was stoked. I worked my ass off to get there. But there was no happiness at that time in my life. I remember my father calling me at work, sitting in that office, to say he was coming to pick me up because he knew where my brother, who had been missing for 4 days, was. The credit card he stole from my mother showed he was at a little oceanfront motel 10 minutes away. And I remember thinking to myself on the way over there...I have to open the motel room door. I can't let my dad see him hanging. It will destroy his life. I told my dad to wait about 10 feet to my left, and I opened the door, and there was my brother fashioning a sheet into a noose. Another time he went missing, and they found him on the roof of a building with the inside of his arms slashed from elbow to wrist, just lying in a pool of blood. Dark shit. Both of the insides of his arms were mutilated from being sliced open so many times. At least 30, if not more. He stopped wearing short-sleeved shirts in public about 10 years before he died. He got to the point of seizures when he withdrew and had alcohol-related dementia for the last 3 years of his life, which would come and go. Then one day, after 2 decades, he called my parents and said something was wrong. My parents went over to his place, ended up calling 911, the ambulance got there, and he started walking outside with assistance from paramedics and collapsed. In front of my parents. He was rushed to the hospital. I had not seen my brother for the last 9 years of his life. He disowned me. Because he felt he had to. He killed my dog when he got drunk 9 years before he died. No one knows if he meant to or not, he was so wasted. He couldn't face me after that. So he disowned me. And a piece of my heart died the day he did it. I talked to my parents right before they left to see what was wrong that day. The last thing I said to my dad was, "Do not let him die without me having an opportunity to say goodbye." My dad called me from the er 2 hours later and said, "You should come over now. He won't know you're here." When I got there, I was shocked at what I saw. He wasn't the right color. He was in a coma. Severe internal bleeding. On life support. It was jarring even after seeing him in a much similar state hundreds of times for such a long time. He was taken to the ICU 3 hours later, where they would transfuse blood by the bag damn near constantly, and it just shot out of his nose. It was bloody. A lot of blood. After about 6 hours, I told my parents to go home and get some rest. I would stay with him. And I talked to him like he was right there. Like one of the hundreds of pillow-fort slumber parties we had as kids. Like no time had passed, and his addiction never existed. I showed him pictures of my life over the past decade on my phone...just like he was there. But he wasn't there. And after 3 hours and extensive talks with several doctors and specialists, I had to make the decision to remove his life support. After my parents returned and said goodbye, I told them to wait out in the hall until he passed because I could not allow them to have the memory of him dying, and I returned to my brother's side, and said what I needed to say, bawling my heart out. I told them to turn off the machines, and I held him in my arms as he died. It took just over 7 minutes. And I just held him. I had Nine Inch Nails playing for him. One of his favorites thanks to Pretty Hate Machine. He was a fan for life after that. He was my best friend. But he was also someone I had to protect myself from if he was intoxicated. This is the end that usually becomes a reality for addicts and their families. Then there's someone like Bam Margera. He went to the same place my brother went to in his head. And he came back. Bam is one of the greatest comebacks ever and a story of recovery worth knowing. I see YouTube shorts of Bam skating again every day, and I'm so moved that I just sit here and cry. You can see his personality is back. You have no idea how rare that is. Their personality shows very little while they're in their addiction. Recovery stories are incredibly personal to so many people, including those who have gone through addiction with an addict because they love them so much...they'd see anything they had to see and endure anything they have to endure just to be there with them at their lowest point. Addicts are not monsters. The stuff they use to numb the pain they do not understand is the real monster. And when you put enough of that into a human being, they do things they would *never* do without it. People are not pure. We are more complex than that. We are good and bad. Light and dark. Right and wrong. Chaotic and serene. You will find that the answer to every question you have about life is usually "both" for a reason. Because one can not exist without the other. With recovery stories like @HunterBiden's and Bam Margera's out in the ether, more people will be less ignorant as to how this disease plays out, and that will do nothing but good for so many families struggling with this issue. Addiction isn't just for the addict. Addiction is for everyone who loves them, as well. It's just a different perspective of hell. So listen to recovery stories with renewed respect because most addicts end up the way it ended for the only sibling I'll ever have.