Family History

Everytime I think my life is sucking, I just have to talk to my younger brother to see how it's really not as bad as it could be. Ggaaaahhh.

Let me just say as a brief, thoroughly incomplete overview, that the years 1990-1996 were really quite ugly chez nous. Dad drinking and smoking, Mom sleeping on the couch, brother getting arrested, me just wanting OUT but worried about the munchkins. Happily, this is no longer remotely the case. A few wakeup calls (ie: heartattacks) caused reevaluation of what was truly important and what was just fluff. All are much happier, but the damage of the Ugly Years can't be totally erased.

Mental Illness - of the depressive and bipolar varieties - run, if not heavily, then consistently, on both sides of the family. Crazy Great Aunt Joy liked to walk to the store naked in her manic phases... My grandmother didn't leave the house for 4 years after my mother was born... My father = classic bipolar in denial... his father, a sloppy sad drunk who undoubtedly had the same underlying issues. I could keep going, but I'll spare you. And myself.

Unfortunately, my brother seems to have inherited my dad's issues. What's worse is that he knows he has a problem and should get help for it. But he has this aversion to medication - his ex-girlfriend got really zombified on Prozac so I suppose I would be cautious if I were him as well. But. Self-medicating with copious amounts of alcohol and pot are not going to help him either.

So there's another reason I want the whole Wellbutrin thing to work out for me. If it works for me and I can show Bubby Rubby that I am not a zombie as a result, then maybe I can talk him into getting some help also.