Oh Brother

Gabriel was 24 and mentally ill. His mother was in hospice dying of cancer and he lived with his older brother, Max, who took care of him. He didn’t have a father.

He had smoked weed in the past but did not have a drug problem or need to be in a drug rehab. What he needed was to be in a long term mental health facility. Problem was Gabriel had been to these places and hated them.

What he figured out, and what hundreds of young people who suffer from mental health issues and their families have figured out was that if he had good insurance and said he had a drug problem he would gladly be accepted at any drug treatment center in the country.

There he wouldn’t be locked down. There he wouldn’t be forced to take meds. There he would be treated nicely. He would not be told he has an incurable mental health disorder that you can only try to manage through a medication salad that may take years to find the best ingredients for… and will never taste good.

So everyone’s happy. The patient is happy to avoid what he needs. The rehab is happy to get paid. The family is happy to get a break and know their loved one is in a safe place. Everyone is happy, except for me.

Gabriel was extremely paranoid. He heard voices. He would scream or laugh maniacally for no reason at all. He scared the other clients and staff. He was prone to breakdowns.

One night there were loud banging noises and screaming from his room. When I opened the door the bed frame was flipped on its side. The mattress was up against the wall and all his belongings were strewn about the place. It looked like a bomb had exploded in there. He looked at me and said “I’m hot”. When I asked him why he put his room in the condition it was in, he said, “for ventilation”.

In these situations I would call his brother Max, the only one in the world that could reach him when he was in this state.

I dialed and gave the phone to Gabriel who screamed at his brother, told him paranoid tales of how we were stealing from him and listening to his thoughts on our computers. After about twenty minutes he would calm down and begin to say “You’re right, Max”, “It might be my thinking, Max”, and “I love you, Max”.

He hung up, gave me my phone, and began to put his room back together.

Our doctor said Gabriel needed a higher level of care. He called him “a liability” and said we should get him out of there as soon as possible. This is no easy task.

You cannot force someone into a mental hospital unless they’re willing to go or actively threatening to harm themselves or others. And we weren’t just going to drop the poor kid off on the corner.

It took weeks and lots of help from his brother to finally convince Gabriel to transfer to a facility that could better accommodate his needs. During this time the staff and clients began to warm up to him. He wasn’t going to hurt anyone. He had a sense of humor. He was kind. He was a good kid. He was just sick. He couldn’t help it.

The other clients got a good look at what a real illness looks like. There were no 12 steps that would make Gabriel better. There were no meetings for him. He couldn’t “count days” he’s been sane, and he would receive no 30 day chip.

I was on the phone a lot with Max on the day his brother was being transferred. Gabriel had a lot of anxiety and would change his mind throughout the morning and start screaming, “I’m not going! You can’t make me! Call the police!”

I would call Max and within twenty minutes Gabriel would calm down and continue with his discharge paperwork.

When his car arrived he walked out the front door, turned to us and said, “I love you guys”. As the car drove off, the entire staff was at the front door waving and crying. We were sad to see him go but even sadder because we knew Gabriel wasn’t going to get better. Life ain’t fair. And that was that.

About a week after Gabriel left, Max called me. He said Gabriel wasn’t doing too good at the new place but he was hoping things would get better. He said he wanted to thank us again but soon it was apparent Max just wanted someone to talk to.

He said he was tired. He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. He said he wasn’t doing good at work. He told me he didn’t know how much more of this he could take. He said he worried about his brother 24 hours a day. At one point in the conversation, he told me he didn’t believe in God but that last night he prayed for the first time in his life. He said, “I just prayed that something would change.”

Amen, Max.