For roughly the past 1 1/2 months I have interviewed recovering addicts, their families and the professionals that have worked with them during their recovery process. Those interviews resulted in the three-part series currently running in the Tribune, and a video that will be on albertleatribune.com today.

It has been an incredibly powerful experience.

The hours, days and weeks I’ve spent interviewing them and others involved in recovery has answered many questions, and brought up other aspects of addiction and recovery that I’d never thought of before. It made me think a lot of my own family and friends who have had their own struggles.

When I was a child, my father was diagnosed with depression. He went through a two-year span where he suffered a number of losses; he and my mother lost a child, his own mother passed away and two of his close friends died — one from cancer and another from committing suicide, taking his young son with him. During that time my dad was also laid off from his job, and my younger brother spent the first month of his life in and out of the hospital with breathing complications.

I was young enough at the time that I didn’t fully understand my dad was sick. I remember him being unhappy, and at times he just seemed like he wasn’t really there.

My dad’s struggle got to the point where my mom told him he had to get help; things couldn’t keep going the way they were. He went to counseling — both by himself and with my mother — and through prescribed medication and through finding other outlets, he slowly came back.

While addiction and depression aren’t the same, I think they overlap quite a bit. My mom has always been open about what my dad went through, and when my dad was still living he tried talking about it when he could. I think open dialogue is vital for recovery in any aspect.

A number of my cousins have struggled with addiction. Fortunately, many of them have worked through those struggles and have come out the other side as even better individuals for it. They’ve moved on, had beautiful families of their own and have started careers they’re passionate about. There’s one, though, that just can’t seem to find his way out.

My cousin Mike has been an alcoholic for at least 15 years, probably longer. Now 38, Mike started drinking when he was a teenager and hasn’t stopped since. He spent the night of his 21st birthday in the emergency room with a brain bleed, after picking a fight while out barhopping and essentially getting curbstomped for his efforts. I’m not positive, but I believe his blood alcohol level was around a .4 percent — .5 percent is said to be lethal.

From there, Mike’s drinking has only gotten worse over time. He has racked up a number of DUIs, has spent time in jail, can’t hold down a job and lives in his mother’s basement. The disease is affecting his physical health; he doesn’t ever have much of an appetite, and when he does it’s hard for him to keep much of his food down. With Mike and most of my mom’s side of the family living in Ohio, more time goes by in between my visits home. Mike looks visibly sicker every time I see him, and I’m not sure how much longer he can keep going this way.

When he’s sober, Mike is one of the most wonderful, hard-working, charismatic people I know. When he’s drunk, he’s easily the cruelest person I’ve ever met. He knows your weaknesses and will use them against you to make you feel worse than he does. He’ll belittle his own mother; he has insulted and thrown my dead father in my face, and will insult his own childhood best friends to the point where they’re physically fighting.

When I was a child, Mike was like the older brother I never had. He’d babysit my younger brother and me, teaching us how to throw a football or coming up with obstacle courses in our backyard. I know that version of him is the real Mike — not the one that hurts those closest to him by both lashing out and by slowly destroying himself over time. It has been so long since that person everyone loves has been around, though, that I think a lot of us — including Mike — have forgotten he exists. I hope he remembers soon.