yeah, the loss of inhibition, the clarity of thought, the willingness to engage fearlessly in some thoughts and tasks that when either fully sober or fully drunk seem inhibiting.

it's an expression of the adaptation of your body to alchohol, it now functions better with booze than without. Your engine purrs, your brain hums, and life is good. And, it is seductive.

For me, those were the danger signs that I was succumbing to the family disease that shattered the lives of my parents and my brother. One died from his seventh heart attack at 64, one died - sober - after detoxing in a mental institution, then guardianshipped to a nursing home with senile dementia, diagnosed post death as Alzheimers. My bro gassed himself to death, giving tribute to the single largest cause of death with alchoholics, which is suicide. Had he not done it with carbon mono, the damage to his liver was becoming insurmountable.

So I stopped. I work out now, three times a week. I work, with concentration, forty to fifty hours a week, at a job I actually love. I spend time with my stepson and his new wife, and I spend time with my wife. I no longer engage in explaining in slurred language to someone what a "barkeeper's special" is......

Is it different? Yea, and I miss booze and its effects regularly. I never went to AA, so I lack the post-boozy cameraderie of those who have done the same thing. Didn't want the exposure to caffiene and sugar that are classic accompanyments to so many AA meetings. I did it cold, with the loving support of my wife, who didn't need a second drunkie hubby.

I also note the passing of endemic low-key depression. Colors seem brighter, the sun shinier, and tho I am no polyanny, life is a bit easier on a day/day basis. I leave cocktail parties after everyone else's third drink, as by that point, the conversation is brilliant if you are drunk, virtually illiterate if you are sober. I spend more time with photography and art, and with the friends that share that. I no longer to struggle to reanchor what day it is, what time it is, and what I am doing. Never subjected to blackouts, I nonetheless, lost huge time in the fuzz of the buzz.

So, your choice is straightforward.... you can continue to engage in a use of a substance that will continue to seduce your body's biochemestry with increasingly debilitiating side effects, both physically or emotionally, or you can go sober.

There is, with childrer, what is frequently referred to as "magical thinking", which emerges as a child strives to put the most positive spin on activites and events, as well as the people who populate and enact those events. Children, developmentally, tend to assume that they are the center of the universe, and thus engage in another aspect of "magical thinking" which is that good and bad things happen because of the child's behavior. Only in adolescence does the maturity arrive for the individual to begin to differentiate and contextualize their own lives in a broader setting. Up until then, mommy and daddy argue, it is the child's concept that it is his or her fault. The child is slammed into a closet and held against one's will, the child assumes that it is the child's fault. Not logical, but inherent as some aspect of the developmental process.

So, it is easier to engage in the "magical thinking" that the younger sib "participated' in the behavior than believe that the younger sib was truly, truly powerless. Which is, in adult terms, what happened. The raw reality that the younger sib was truly, truly powerless, that the older sib was using significant age and physical differentiators to establish, beyond a doubt, that the older sib could do what he wished to. Eight years is a massive differentiator.

The younger sib's response - to goad, to egg on, which causes that sib to feel 'complicit" is simply one array of responses in the situation, but it probably had very little impact on the cruel, perhaps sadistic, behavior of the older sib.

So, I join those who suggest a skilled trauma therapist, one with strong interventional skills, and possibly one with EMDR as a therapeutic interventional tool.

Some things to be aware of as this therapeutic journey initiates:

The younger sib was innocent

The parents, whether through benign neglect, malignant neglect or obtuse passive aggressive sadism, were "enablers". Parents protect children. That is what good parents do.

The older sib is either a sociopath or was applying learned behaviors, or re-enacting. Those are all interesting venues to explore, but they are not the salient issues for the LW, whose first focus should be on LW's feelings as LW processes what truly, truly happened. Why the older sib did what he did is of some abstract interest, but is not of fundamental value in grappling with the feelings of fear, grief, anger/rage and sadness that are at the core of LW's experience, emotions that LW has successfully blocked to date by assuming "co-responsibiltiy".

The reference to "sexual abuse did not happen" is an interesting one, and might suggest that the threat of abuse was potent.... otherwise, why mention it?

So, I applaud LW's desire for an objective opinion. That opinion should be articualted by a skilled, talented and knowledgable trauma therapist who can support LW in finding the feelings behind the rationalizations. It will be a bumpy, but ultimately profoundly rewarding healing journey.