AITA for abandoning my brother after promising to my mom that I wouldn’t

A 33-year-old man grapples with a difficult family dynamic as he tries to care for his troubled younger brother, who has a learning disability and severe substance abuse issues.

After years of their mother supporting the brother emotionally and financially, she has passed away, leaving the man feeling obligated to fulfill a promise he made to her. Despite multiple attempts to help his brother, including visits and support, the brother’s abusive behavior and substance issues have pushed him to set boundaries.

He feels guilty for potentially abandoning his brother, who now claims he’s been left alone.

AITA for abandoning my brother after promising to my mom that I wouldn’t

This is a tough post to write and it’s even tougher to make it succinct. I (33M) could write endlessly about this… Apologies for the long post.

From an early age it was clear that my younger brother was going to struggle. He had a learning disability and it is through herculean efforts by my mother and that he managed to get through school, and with the help of a full time tutor who sat with him throughout elementary school. He managed to get a job in construction and did alright for himself in terms of income.

Skipping forward a few years, he is now 31, and he has been heavy a*coholic and eventually fell into hard drugs such as crack. Despite a monthly income of $4000 and expenses of only $800, he found himself constantly asking our parents for “rent money”, and they supported him and his vices, because they felt like if they “abandoned” him he would unravel even worse.

He’s a hateful, r*cist, misogynistic person, who is constantly angry and ranting. As a result, he’s extremely difficult to be around because he oozes negativity and bad takes. And consequently, he’s lonely. He has lost all of his friends, the girl he likes doesn’t like him back and his heart has been broken for 3+ years now.

So he heavily relied on my parents for emotional support. He would spent weeks at their place because he “couldn’t be alone”, crying and yelling in pain and self-p*ty. He often scared them, and often damaged their house.

Mom spent countless hours of her life trying to research and find ways to help him at the expense of her own well-being. We’ve tried to gently push him toward getting professional help and we succeeded in getting some for him on a few occasions.

He did a detox program, AA and quickly relapsed, and now he refuses help, or when he starts getting helps he quickly gives up. He has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Years ago, before the situation was nearly as bad as it is now, my mother made me promise to take care of him when they’ll be gone. Unfortunately, that time has come and I’m at the point where I have to make good on my promise.

My brother called me on a MANY occasions while in crisis, and I made myself available to him over the phone. On 4-5 occasions over the course of the past few months, I took time off work and I drove 2.5 hours to go be with him and to suffer through his caustic presence.

He is much stronger than I am and at times I feared for my safety although he has never gotten physical (except for breaking things). I also took him home last weekend after making him promise he wouldn’t drink or do drugs.

We made him a proper homemade meal and tried to steer the conversation away from his usual nonsense and things went ok.Sadly he did at my home what he did at my parents…

While we were sleeping, he walked to the convenience store, bought a case of beer, drank the whole thing, had a crisis, yelled and screamed, threw stuff around and damaged some of the drywall and some of our stuff. He had a wound somehow and was bleeding on the carpet.

I went to try to help and he was belligerent and loud to the point where I thought I would have to call the police. He ended up calming down, but my wife is now terrified of him.I feel like being 2h30 away from him and given what has happened, I’m not equipped to help him, and I’m not equipped to feel safe from him.

Also, his constant calls where I have to suffer through his abuse and his nonsense are weighing down on me. So I’ve set some pretty rough boundaries. I no longer want to see him in person until he gets himself sorted out.

He calls most days, often 2-3 times, but if I’m busy or if I can’t take it, I tell him I’ll call him back when I can. We usually end up talking for an hour every week, on the weekend.He accuses me of abandoning him. I feel like I’m breaking the promise I made to mom. He’s alone now and I worry about what will happen.

AITA for not helping him more

Here’s what people had to say to OP:

Iamstaceylynn says:
NTA You can not destroy yourself trying to save him. My mother always wanted to know that I would be there for my a*coholic, d*ug using, crime committing brother. I assured her that I would not be. She passed away last December & I don’t regret my choice. I will not throw away my life trying to keep him from throwing away his. You didn’t cause your brother’s problems, and you can’t cure them.

usernaym44 says:
This. OP, there’s a difference between being there for someone and enabling them; it’s the same difference as that between boundaries and a*andonment. Tell him that next time: “I’m living an emotionally healthy life. You’re welcome into my life whenever you’re ready to be emotionally healthy. And I’ll support you any way I can in getting there. But until you’re ready to get there, you have to stay away.”

deinowithglasses says:
Unfortunately, some people need to hit rock bottom to get help. He obviously isn’t going to take responsibility for his actions or situation (not completely his fault, this is common in BPD, and needs a lot of therapy, DBT in particular, to help). With the situation you’re describing, involvement with the justice system is likely or has already happened, which may be the only option to make him get treatment for his addiction and BPD.

GlitterDoomsday says:
With the bonus of passing the burden of guilty to the next generation before they died… OP you seriously should consider therapy for yourself, you probably isn’t ready to deal with your brother because you grew up in an environment that only reached how to enable him.

fbombmom_ says:
NTA. Your parents were AH for making you promise to care for him. He’s their child, and they allowed him to become this way. He is not your responsibility. You are under no obligation to care for a grown-ass adult. They can continue to enable him or not. Their choice, and not your problem. You have a wife and your own life to consider.

tytyoreo says:
NTA. . You’re not abandoning him…you can’t help someone that doesnt want to be help…theres only so much the system will and can do…. I know people that say they will get clean but don’t… one person I know only went to a detox facility just to have a place to sleep…. Hopefully your brother will figure it out and choose to get clean.. Sending positive vibes and thoughts your way…..

ContributionOrnery29 says:
After a certain point, I’m not sure even the system should be responsible for him. Or if they are, then I can understand why anybody involved in the system would simply not want to.

People need to want to help themselves before improving. You not immediately jumping to make it better for him like your mother stands a better chance of getting him to that point.

But say he does want to, and finds healthier ways to deal with his problems. Would that help fix his personality or would it just make him more likely to leave the house and subject other people to it? Will he be medicated in this scenario and keeping on top of his mental health?

If the answer is no to all of that, then perhaps it would be better for everyone that he stays in a self-destructive spiral, rather than an outwardly destructive one. Disorder or not, if you’re simply a horrible person under it all then crack might be the best option.

Apprehensive_Eye1835 says:
This is such a tough situation. Found myself penning VERY SIMILAR post around Christmas time as I have gone almost zero contact with my brother over the years for identical reasons. I don’t know what I’m going to do when my parents pass away. Heart breaks just thinking about it.