How to Help Someone Who Does Not Want to Help Themself

I can still hear the trembling in my mother’s voice when I picked up the phone Christmas Eve, “Frank is in the hospital, it’s bad”. I had been dreading the call about my uncle for years. I had practically watched the man drink his life away over the course of the last 6 years. The day was here, he had to “meet his maker”.

The last month or so, my life has felt like a personal rendition of A Beautiful Boy.

I’ve watched family members and friends battle with substance issues throughout my entire life. I can remember my grandparents drinking and driving while taking my sisters and I home from school, I had friends lose their entire sense of self from mixing pills with other substances, my favorite artist and role model Mac Miller died to overdose, but nothing will ever compare to watching my uncle nearly drink his life away.

Frank was my first best friend, whether he knows it or not. Whenever he came to town, I would beg him to come outside and throw the football with me, I would dare him to take me to bars and watch the game with him, I wanted to be wherever Big Frank was.

Frank is the reason I love the Cleveland Browns and Cavaliers, he attended The Ohio State University and I embodied it more than he did, my love for reality TV and coming of age films stems from his late night consumerism.

I’ll never forget when he showed me how to make fried bologna sandwiches at 2am on a summer evening. Frank showed me many of my favorite things and as I have told many people in my life, I hope to never be like him.

My perception of Frank changed in my teenage years. After he and my mom’s dad died a lot changed. Frank resorted to alcohol to cope with the pain and loss. It got so bad that nearly every-time that Frank would come visit he would go through a handle of bottom shelf vodka a day.

As I got older I got to see the other sides of Frank, the abuser, the dead beat dad, the addict, and the centrist antagonizer. Like most addicts Frank fails to take accountability for his actions, but at some point, the blame has got to fall on someone.

How do you help someone who so desperately does not want to be helped?

I have been asking myself this question about Frank for years. Anytime someone would bring up his alcohol addiction it would end in a screaming match. The ugliest spats always came between he and my grandmother, my grandmother would call me or come over, eyes glossed after crying, knowing there was nothing she or anyone could do that would get Frank to put down the bottle. Frank did not care, he was on a war path, especially during the last two years. Hell, even I, sometimes the last line-of communication wanted fuck all to do with the guy.

Frank would text me, belittling me, attacking me, calling me a pussy, calling me soft, bullying me, insulting my father, I had to block him. I did not talk to him for months. The next thing I know it’s Christmas Eve and my mom and grandmother are in tears because he’s in the hospital. I did not know how to react. I had been preparing for this moment for years, I thought, but nothing can prepare you for the hospitalization of your first best friend.

Frank was told he has spots on his liver, holes in his esophagus, damage to his kidneys, and that he can never drink again.

Weeks had passed and Frank was sober. He went home to Ohio, stayed with some family, got sober and was on his way. My mom and I were the only people in the entire family that advocated for him to get professional help, everyone else brushed it off and said he was good to go, he had his scare, but were assured by the addict that he would never touch the sauce again.

Welp, 35 days passed, my mom gets yet another call from a hospital in Alabama (?), and Frank crumbled, he gave more power to the thing that is actively killing him.

This past weekend I saw Frank for the first time in roughly a year. He came out to Colorado to get help, or so he says. He’s staying with my two parents and sisters, a block a way from his mothers house.

I truly did not know how to feel when I saw Frank. I felt sorry for him, I felt glad that he is in Colorado, I felt powerless, helpless, but I also felt the need and want to be supportive.

I watched Frank try to kill himself with alcohol for years and I was too scared to say anything. I stood back, I’m twenty five years younger than him, what in the fuck does he care what I have to say? Clearly nothing, after years of micro aggressions, little to no communication, and spiteful painful remarks trying to disenfranchise who I am, trying to silence me. Who was I to ever offer any insight or help?

I am trying not to burden myself with the thought that I did not do enough, that I could have prevented any of this from occurring. That would be unfair and truly there is nothing that anyone could have said to steer this situation from eventual wreckage. It is as clear to me as ever, the only person that can help Frank, is Frank.

I don’t know how to help someone who does not want to help themselves. My goal moving forwards is to support the people who are supporting Frank. Until Frank proves he wants to get help, until he proves he is not trying to live out a death wish, I don't know what to do.

My uncle is an addict and to anyone who says booze is nothing like the other substances, is blind-fully wrong. I watched him blackout daily and chug through nail polish like solutions, I dealt with the aggression and spite, I dealt with the blame being put on everyone but the addict himself. I do not want to be like my uncle Frank, but I will support him, I will help him, but not until he takes some steps himself.

Support the people around you, but do not let that support drain you to the point of exhaustion and anxiety, as every problem that is not your own should not be treated as such. I’m not here to bring Frank back to life, but I am here to try and help him find new life.