My brother is an alcoholic.

He's been one since he was 14. He spent his early adult life partying and hanging out with his friends. Chasing tail and the bottle and just generally having a good time. I didn't really think much of it back then because, shit, I had done all that stuff too. I worked at a bar, chased thots around, drank all the time will my friends. I feel like I turned out okay, so why wouldn't he?

He finished high school, and just never really grew up. He worked odd jobs, as long as it was with friends. Never anything long term though. A couple months max. He would stay with friends or our mother, but never really had his own place. I assumed he would figure it out, you know, life in general. Become a contributing member of society and move forward with his life. Looking back now though, this is when things started to get out of control.

Now lets fast forward 10 years. My brother never figured it out. He continued to live his life as a party guy. Never found a stable job. Never got his own place. Never met new friends. Never left the town he grew up in. He stagnated. All he cared about was finding the next bottle. Couch surfing from one friend to another. Borrowing money from my parents, sometimes stealing it if he had to. He was an addict, and he didn't want help. He wanted to drink. That was his life for 10 years.

Eventually, we convinced him to go rehab to get some help. Six weeks at a rehab center. He made it all the way through! I was pretty proud of him, and I let him know that. He was proud of himself! Something I hadn't seen in a long time. I thought "This is great! Now he'll have the opportunity to have a life worth living, free of the booze!" I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

So, my brother gets out of rehab. He plans to stay with our mother until he can find a job and get on his feet. Sounds like a solid plan to me.

Then he meets the bitch. I call her that because I honestly can remember her name. He moves in with her, in the same little town we all grew up in. He spirals out of control. After one year of dating her, he ends up in the hospital because of his drinking. My family and I go to visit him. He looks awful. Skin is yellow, he's all bloated from the fluid the nurses are pumping into him, slurred speech. I keep a level head, but inside I'm terrified. This is exactly how our father looked before he passed. (He was also a very heavy drinker.)

He gets better and gets released. I ask him whats the deal. Well, "the bitch likes to drink and so do my friends, so there is always booze around." Then leave her! He says something like "I cant sleep without her next me, I love her, blah blah blah."

I guess I get that, but you're going to die if you don't stop drinking.

"I know." He says. "We are going to help each other stop." He says.

Six months later, he's back in the hospital. This time the doctors say if he continues drinking this way, he won't live another year. This one scared him. He got better, left the bitch. Stays with our mother again. He's going to go to therapy, rehab, whatever it takes to get better. He wants a better life, a better relationship with the family. We all welcome it and are so happy that he has decided to make a change.

This was 2 months ago.

2 weeks ago he went back to the bitch.

My brother is back in the hospital. His liver is failing. He's 30 years old, and probably wont see 31.

We were never close. My brother and I are two very different people. We never saw eye to eye and had differing opinions on almost everything. I do love him though. In my head I think "I could have been there more. I could have tried harder to help him. I wish I had noticed his alcohol problems earlier." There are lots of things that I could have done differently. I know I'm not the best big brother, and I carry a lot of shame because of that. But these are all hypotheticals. I'm not sure if any of that would have made a difference. I'm not an alcoholic, so to pretend that I understood what he was going through is unfair. I'll probably never understand it.

There is one thing I am 100% sure of though.

This bitch is killing my brother, and he's letting her do it. She doesn't want him to work. She got a settlement from when her last husband drank himself to death. (I'm not joking about that.) Yet, she complains about him not contributing. She doesn't like it when he sees family. She wont come to family gatherings. (I've never even met the bitch!) She doesnt let him spend time with his friends unless she's with him. She cheats on him, and he is aware of it. She basically neutered my brother. He was once a funny, charismatic handsome young man who is now a shadow of his former self. The bitch destroyed any chance of my brother reclaiming his life from the demon in the bottle and has turned him into her own little simp lap dog. She supplies the booze that is killing him. She gives it to him, and he loves her for it.

Short of chaining him up, my family and I have done everything we can to try and help him. But he doesn't want help. He wants to drink. I'm afraid these next few days might be the last he has. And if by some miracle he survives, he's going to go right back to her, because she'll give him what he wants.

Learn a lesson from my brother. We all have our demons. Demons we fight everyday. When you interject a woman into the mix, those issues multiply. Given a chance, a woman will feed those demons, if only for the enjoyment of watching men fall.

And one final thought.

Fuck that cunt. Fuck her, fuck her family, fuck her friends, fuck her pets. I hope that she lives a long, miserable sad life that amounts to nothing. I hope she lives long enough to see all the people she loves die. And when her time is finally up, I hope it's as slow and painful and lonely as possible. She deserves all of it.