My Fun-Uncle Is Not An Addict, He's Sick

There was a moment when I was 15 years old, a homeless man was asking me for change, I gave him £5 and went about my way to the shops. When I walked back I saw him asleep with a needle in his arm. It's so easy to judge those kinds of situations because we don't really understand, we never do. But I had reasons as to why I decided to give him that money.

When I first caught wind of my uncle’s drug addiction I was 14 years old and it came as a shock to all of us. He was our “fun uncle” who would throw us up in the air and tickle us, he would give us kisses and play video games with us all day. He had as much energy as we did and kept up with us without ever getting tired. Out of all the adults, he allowed us to be children and respected us as we grew into these little adults.

My aunt told me the stories of him breaking out of rehab and prison time after time, we had no clue how but somehow he managed it. My mother thought it was best to send him to a facility that was not only out of state but in a different country. One day, she got a random call from her mother saying that fun-uncle showed up at their home and acted as if nothing happened. How he managed that we don’t know but my cousin and I joke around saying that crackheads always have a way of doing things, and fun-uncle proved it to us that day.

I saw him during Eid and I could tell that my fun-uncle was long gone. The reality of the man sitting across from me at the dinner table wasn’t the man that I knew or grew up with, none of us did. The day of my sister’s wedding, he looked at me and for a second I thought he was there when he smiled at me but he just whispered very quietly can you leave some money before you leave. I didn’t…but when we came back from the reception he had gone through my whole suitcase (and other family members too that were staying at my grandmother’s house) and stole all our money.

When he relapsed was the worst because he thought we were talking about him and freaked out. He pulled a knife on his own sister and threw a plate at his mother that broke on impact and if my recollection serves me right, it left a bruise on her too. My cousin, in the defence of protecting his mother and grandmother, fought him and had beaten him down so badly that we thought that he died in front of us. He didn’t. It was strange to see the man that would ride and die for his family to be the one to hurt it.

It broke my grandmother’s heart to call the police to take him away, but his reality was so far off that he didn’t even know any of us anymore and us him. I saw a little piece of my grandmother die that day. She has had to say goodbye to many friends and family over the years, but saying goodbye to her son that was living and breathing broke her. Somehow, I know she knows that’s not him anymore but I don’t think that stops the pain. When I go back to my grandmother’s house, she’ll leave the front door unlocked and I catch her staying up most nights. I think she’s waiting to see if he’ll come back home.

It’s been two years since I last saw fun-uncle. I asked my mother a couple of months ago if she knew where he is and she says she doesn’t know, no one does. The police in the county where my family’s from are looking for him so he’s not allowed to go back home after escaping custody — amazing still how he’s pulled that off. Crackheads, aye…

I often wonder in his life where it went wrong, what was the trigger that caused all of this to come onto him. My aunt told me that most of his friends that he grew up with were in prison, rehab, or dead, and I think about that all the time. When we were kids, he used to sleep for 2 or 3 days at a time without getting up and we used to laugh about how lazy he was, in hindsight, I realize that he was high. He got kicked out of plenty of schools as well, now we know why. All the red-flags had been there for so many years, we just didn’t pay attention.

When I walk down the streets, I started this habit to look at everyone and wonder if I’ll ever see my fun-uncle asking for change at the side of the streets, and if he would recognize me, his little niece that he used to bring on drives with to get ice cream and give an intense amount of kisses to before he left for school. It’s so weird because I look at him, he’s still the same, but underneath he’s a completely different person.

His illness ravaged through his whole system and seeped into our family and I don’t even know if he were to get help now that he would ever go back to the man he used to be. The man that I used to know. When I read articles about the crack epidemic and how they’re trying to “save” these communities I wonder if they really understand the importance of it. The worst is having politicians and powerful people talking about addicts and addiction like it’s a personal choice when it’s really a sickness. Many like my fun-uncle are sick. We just never noticed it till it’s too late.

Every time I think about fun-uncle now I wonder if all he’s been missing is love. I mean, we all loved him, but sometimes that’s not enough and that’s okay. People are different from the way that they receive love and maybe all he needed was his mother to hold him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Or his 7 other siblings to support him through the tough times with empathy and kindness instead of tough-love.

Love is a funny thing — we think everyone expresses their love the same way we do and when they don’t, we’re afraid it’s not there. If only fun-uncle could see our heartbreak, he would see the love there. Often times when I think about fun-uncle I try to think about him with so much love in hopes that it’ll save him, but his sickness has gone far beyond what love can do for him.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, or if I want to. There’s so much damage that’s been done and as each year passed I know that many other families go through the same thing. Every time I walk in the streets my heart aches because the reality is that no one is going to save them, they’re just looked at as nothing but being less than. I think that’s what hurts the most, is that people see my loving fun-uncle as nothing but another addict on the streets.