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I have written and shared about my son that suffered the traumatic brain injury last year. He has resently lost a job and had a set back... Depression something. Maybe I'm making excuse. Bottom line he has been homeless so went back to our home town, hooked up with some buddies and has been on a drinking binge. He has been very rude to me WHEN I have been able to contact him, which is typical when he is using, but this time far worse. Maybe because I told him he could not stay with me and I would not financially help him to get another home after he was kicked out of the clean & sober house I paid for... I know I sound rediculous inabling but please remember the brain injury...
OK the question... He was taken to jail for DUI and his car was impounded.... The fee will be about $300 to get the car out. The car is worth about $4,000. Do I just let him lose the car? He has NO money and NO way of getting any... I thought that if he agrees, I could pay to get the car IF he signs it over to me. He can have it back when he repays me and participating in treatment and is staying clean. ?????? What does everyone think? Any thoughts or new ideas would be very appriciated. I believe in natural consequences but ouch.... I paid alot of money for that car.... ????
Personally, I would get the car out and keep it. No more ultimatiums of "If you do this then I will do that". Brain injury or not, enabling is enabling. I do not have a brain injury and I am not an alcoholic but my mother enabled me (financially abused me) into a state of total dependence on her. It ruined what could have been a good relationship. Whenever there is money and grown children involved, I can tell you from my own personal experiences that it is always better to let the adult child be an adult.
With a DUI, he might end up getting a suspened license anyway. If you paid for the car and the storage fees, keep the car and you have the keys. He has to earn his way back to having a car. Bettina
He's on his way toward loosing everything all on his own and has used all of your old justifications to get where he is at now. Considering the value of his very life versus the assumed value of the car (buyers actually set the value) against the program suggestion (to me from the elders) do you want to put a pillow between him and his real bottom if that ever arrives? When I stopped diving between my alcoholics body and her bottom...she went for help without even asking for my directions. Go figure!! She went on her own. Did she get a guarantee that it would work? Not the first time or the second and the last time we hugged and showed love to each other she was sober and I had no one to save but me.
The definition of insanity is sometimes said to be, "Doing the same things over and over expecting different results." Could you put your money to better use? Just a different kind of question...with a different consequence.
The A who I was with lost everything over time. He also left me with nothing, nada, not one thing.
He took whatever he could to share with his drug buddies. Now he calls and asks me to be "fair" to be "honest". I have nothing left to say to him so I say nothing that is about as honest as it gets, saying absolutely nada.
A's don't have logic. Admittedly your son has other issues. There are resources for those.
Some people do hit bottom. I don't know about your usage of "letting" him hit bottom. I don't think we "let" addicts do anything. We may step in but that's in no way "letting" them do anything.
You can of course go get his car for him and put down limits about when he can use it. Speaking as someone who's tried to do with an A I didn't suceed well. I put myself under the ground worrying about the car/truck whatever he eventually destroyed too.
Of course you are going to worry, be upset, have a whole range of emotions about what and when you can do. The issue is that if you don't set limits on your worrying and being overwrought you will indeed get sick, very very ill.
So while of course you need to be concerned about your son and have every right to be, please take care of you. Are you eating, how about sleep. Can do you do that. What are you doing to take care of you. You deserve a life.
You do deserve to take care of you no matter what your son does.
He needs to see a change in your rescue efforts, rather than you always being there to save him. If you get the car (since you paid for it), and sell it to regain some of the money you put out, he won't be able to count on getting "his" car back. He really does need to hit his bottom.
I know for me, my AH didn't even consider changing his ways until he saw new reactions from me. Once I started changing my behavior towards him and his problems, he realized I wasn't going to do the same old thing ("save" him), and he had no choice but to change.
I've read your posts before concerning your son, and you always comment how mean he is to you. I've learned that "them" being mean to us is their guilt, and knowing that no matter what they dish out, we will always be there. In a way, that was comforting to me, because it made me see that I was the one person he knew he could always count on. In some strange way, it let me know that he really did love me. (I can't really explain, I guess it sounds bizarre!)
