How I Dealt With Drug Hitmen and What I Learned From It
By: Maria Marmo
Tags: Self Improvement, Personal Development, Life, Life Lessons, Drugs

How I Dealt With Drug Hitmen and What I Learned From It

“Your brother owes us money. If you don’t pay us, we’ll kill him.”

Image by Alex Nicolae from Pixabay

“We know where you live. We’ll set your house on fire with your parents and your sister in it.”

No. It’s not an excerpt from a movie. It’s a message sent to my brother’s phone, about 10 years ago.

My brother started using drugs by the age of 13. He’s now 33. Go figure. He’s been admitted to roughly 12 rehab centers in at least three countries over these 20 years. None of them made any difference. But I must admit, while he’s in rehab — or in jail — we breathe again. We know exactly where he is. We know he won’t be phoning at 3 am saying he has no place to go. We know the police won’t be calling us. We know the drug hitmen won’t come after him — or after us.

This is the first time in 20 years I dare to write about my brother’s addiction. One that has wrecked our lives. One that has aged my parents precisely 20 years.

Each rehab treatment used to bring new hope for us. Not anymore. We’re now longtime veterans in this infinite loop of drug addiction. But after a torturous journey, we finally said it. “That’s it. You’re all by yourself now.” Not sure how long it’ll last, though.

Addiction is an ongoing cycle of highs and lows. During the highs, my brother gets a job and leads a “normal” life for about a week or two. Then the lows come, and he starts skipping work, or being late, or asking for money. Or the three of them. By that time, we’re already waiting for the disaster to happen, while secretly hoping this time is different — though we know deep inside it won’t be. And it isn’t. Just like it happened a thousand times before, he finally falls off the radar. His cell phone is no longer responsive. His whereabouts, unknown. We fear the worst — yet, we beg for it to end soon. After a week or two, he resurfaces from the ashes, almost naked, barefoot, dirty, and broken. He’ll ask us to drive him once again to a rehab center, but we found out this is mostly a strategy he uses to escape from drug hitmen. They don’t harass addicts while they’re in jail or in rehab.

Each time he gets out of rehab — or jail/mental hospital — we tremble with fear. It’s showtime. Anything can happen. Like that afternoon, back in 2010, when we saw that message on his phone.

“We know where you live. We’ll set your house on fire with your parents and your sister in it.”

“I’ll kill all your family if you don’t pay us.”

These messages were clearly trying to instill fear. And they had succeeded big time. But we went on with our lives — though not for long. Our bell rang a few days later.

A tall, bearded man was at the door.

“Yes, how can I help you?” — I asked.

“You’re Nicholas’s sister, aren’t you? We’ve contacted your brother to let him know we would be here. He owes us $1,300.”

“What? Who are you? How much?” — I asked in awe.

“$1,300”

My dad came to the door and asked me if everything was fine. I explained the situation to him. My dad approached the man. He — naively — told him not to sell drugs to my brother anymore. The man looked at my dad and said, in a very polite demeanor,

“Sorry Sir, this is how it works.”

My father went inside to fetch the money. But he had misunderstood the amount, so he gave the man $1,600 instead. The man gave $300 back to him and said,

“Sir, it’s $1,300. We’re 100% transparent.”

I must admit, such decency is not commonplace these days.

My brother’s drug debt was canceled, and we tried to forget about this episode just like if it had been a bad dream.