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My son is in treatment and on probation. Residing at our home. 18. Has continued to use througout this treatment episode. First treatment. This was confronted last Monday in treatment. Started attending NA meetings last Tuesday. Used again after treatment Friday. He doesn't want me to tell his treatment provider. Doesn't want to go to inpatient or to jail. I'm torn on what to do. He is in ALOT of trouble legal, has pending charges for distribution of marijuana. One juvenile probation as of a week and a half ago for drug paraphanilia. I'm totally stressed out since bonding him out of jail 6 weeks ago so he could get treatment. I typically have been able to channel my stress by running but due to injury can't run so have gained 15 pounds or so as I am eating to deal with my own emotions which I am fully aware is not healthy!! He says he wants another chance but I just don't believe anything he says. I want to believe him but I don't. Feedback please.
I have been there done that. I gave my son his last choice about 6 months ago and he choose to drink. Now I have let go and let God take care of me. He does not and will not reside with me. I will not enable him one ounce if he chooses this life. As long as he had my help in ANY way he had the soft landing....no more. He will have to deal with his choices without my help at all.
If and when he really wants help....he doesn't need you because you can't do anything anyways but give him that soft landing. When he suffers hard and long enough he then might seek the real help he needs.
Take care.....keep coming back because there is hope and we are here for your support.
((( hugs )))
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Our fears for our kids can often make us do extreme things and take over their responsibilities. My mantra with my sons was : I can support your recovery but I will not support your disease--I can't let my anxiety over your choices/concsequences cause me to do the wrong thing or to do for u what you should do for yourself. If I do this I continue to be part of the problem." Al-anon has given me the strength to follow thorough and be part of the solution and it has not been easy. But it felt RIGHT for me. I even had my 20 year old son thank me from the podium for being strong in Al-anon when he had his one year clean because I allowed him to be arrested for breaking back into our home after we had drawn this line with him.
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Wishing all the best on your recovery journey, Luv
Quick update. I called the bondsman and shared the struggles occurring by having him live in our house. I revealed he has not got clean, continue to use, continues to go to treatment and meetings etc. The bondsman had a talk with him for about 20 min and explain if his juvenile probation is revoked due to dirty UA's he will revoke the felony bond. He also advised me if Zakk continues to use drugs he wants a call from me and that he will revoke the bond. I have been threatening to call the bondsman for weeks. Empty threats until today. I feel a huge burden was lifted this evening. He went to an NA meeting and when I picked him up he said he was sorry. I so want to believe him but he is going to have to show me he is sorry thru his actions. It wasn't until I refused to apologize with words and advised my actions would be the apology that things changed for me. It took me a good 15 years of being in and out of treatment and AA to get my s*** together. He has been working at this very poorly for the last 5 weeks. Time will tell if he truly wants a different life. I feel free that I stopped keeping this secret. The thing that is maddening if I know how crazy my actions and behaviors and reactions are. It is my choice to stay in this crazytown mode. It is my choice to own his s***. It is my choice to recover. I am glad I found this forum for support. Today was one of my darkest days.
-- Edited by hotrod on Sunday 5th of May 2013 09:40:17 PM
Someone who is using actively despite all the legal trouble and despite hearing hours of antidrug/treatment rhetoric is CLEARLY not wanting to recover. MOM, you will be able to tell when he's serious but right now, his actions sound like someone playing you and trying to play the system. True recovery involves rigorous honesty, sucking it up and taking our consequences, and only caring about getting better, not using, and doing the next right thing. It does not sound like he's there yet at all. If he really wanted to recover, why wouldn't he talk about relapsing to the treatment provider? That's like trying to fool a doctor that you are not medically sick. Who would do that other than someone that doesn't want to get well?
So, I would recommend alanon for you cuz nothing you do going to make him take the next right steps. You didn't cause this, can't control it, cannot cure it (3 C's).
These kinds of issues send me into a tailspin, too. I guess I wouldn't volunteer information to the treatment provider unless I was asked the question since to my way of thinking - my son's relationship to the treatment provider and the legal system is his business - not mine. I also wouldn't lie if asked for information. I wouldn't let him stay with me either because I don't like being used. But, that's all me. No matter how much trouble my son got into, support I gave him, or treatment plans he went through - he still went back to using for reasons unknown to me since those reasons are and were his business. My business was to live in my home without the constant drama of my son who slapped away any true source of recovery that was offered him.
Of course, I'd hear how he couldn't stand the way he was living, that he just wish he could catch a break, or that it was my fault, his father's fault, his sister's fault, his girlfriend's fault, the world's fault and God's fault that he was miserable and it was his opinion that all of us should change so that he could live the life he wanted to live. There were 2:30 a.m. calls with him drunk or strung out and text messages that blamed me for his life "on the streets" but in the end he did what he needed to do to get the help he needed - jail and prison. It took him multiple months to dry out, receive the medication he needed that he'd been doing well on but decided he wasn't going to take it, and lots of anger at me because I wouldn't make his life in prison more comfortable for him, but now - even though he's still in prison - we have a decent relationship, he is working on his life again, and he's proud of himself because any money in his prison account is money he's earned in prison (which isn't much).
He expects to be released soon, with little sad hints to live with me - which won't happen since I've been there, done that multiple times, but what he has shown himself since I stopped "helping him" is that he is capable of working on his life, earning money and behaving like a human being rather than soap on a rope. He's no longer mad at me because I let him "hang out there" and refused to help his life in prison be more comfortable for him because he's proud of what he has accomplished. Last time I saw him he admitted that although it feels good for others to give him money or help him out, deep down he resents them for doing it because he's doing nothing for himself.
Whatever you decide to do in relationship to your son is the best you can do at the time. Each decision you make will bring you an opportunity to learn more about yourself and what is in your best interest. You can't make a mistake here. You can only make choices that you're ready to make with the facts that you have at hand and the insights that you have now.
Regarding the didn't cause it, where do genetics play in here? Thank you all for the feedback.
If he doesn't stay here, it revokes his bond. It is a condition of his bond to live here, not use, and complete treatment successfully. This is his first treatment attempt as well. The stakes are very high. His pattern mirrors my own. You are correct, the choice is mine. Trying to figure out what I am willing to live with and what I am unwilling to have in my life are difficult.
No one EVER gave up on me and my recovery. However, I don't know that I was ever this deep in denial, even at this age.
For me, getting sober was a piece of cake, compared to parenting an addicted child. This sucks to say the least.
And additionally, I do feel responsible in some sense regarding how I raised him. I attempted to protect him from uncomfortable consequences his entire life. Didn't follow thru with consequences i set out. Made a lot of mistakes along the way as we all do.
I did the same thing....and my quilt was BIG...really big.
In Al-anon we learn to forgive ourselves for our mistakes and quilt. We learn we can't change the past or know what's in the future....we can only live in the present...one day at a time.
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Lord, put your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth
Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.
Lots of issues to sort through for you. I had to work through some of the same ones you are wrestling with now. Checking my motives for taking or not taking action on behalf of my son helped me come to decisions that I could live with one day at a time. Lots of meetings helped, too. The best help I really got in the early years of my son's disease were open AA meetings. Hearing the reasons people ended up in AA helped me stay true to what my HP seemed to be inviting me to do, too. Letting go of your son's choices and the consequences for those choices to my way of thinking isn't giving up on him. It's respecting his right to make his own decisions and live with the outcome of those choices. As a mother, that was one of the hardest lessons to learn because I didn't want my children to suffer, to make horrendous mistakes, to live miserable lives. Letting my son go wasn't easy. I could see the path he was heading down. But - he taught me I couldn't stop him, protect him, love him or push him into any direction he didn't want to go. He freed me from thinking I could do anything to change things for him. Only he could change things for himself. I do wish you the very, very best your HP has to give you and your son, too.
You may have been part of the genetics -- some huge proportion of people in our society have the underlying tendency, that's clear. And you may well have raised him in ways you wouldn't choose again, though you were trying your hardest. But however that went, we can't undo the past, we can only act for the healthiest course in the present. Enabling addicts never gets them into recovery or helps them face the consequences of their addiction. He is the one who has to make the decision to recover now -- no one else can do it for him. You can only make the addiction easier or the conditions for recovery easier. The consequences of his choices are inpatient or jail. What he is silently asking is : "Can I keep using and get away with doing it, without having to suffer the consequences? Can I keep using and have everybody let me off easy so I can keep using again?" Your response will be an important reality check, or not.
It has always been his decision when to use and when not...how to do things legally and not. Don't treat him like he doesn't know...he knows about it all and he hangs with hundreds of others who know it all...that is why they sneak, do it in the dark, hide and run...so he knows and knows that he knows. Affirm that levelly with him and affirm also that whatever happens to him is his choice. You know how the addiction runs against our drink and using thoughts of quitting. We think of quitting and plan to quit and it turns up the heat on us causing us pain. You have the experience of reaching past the pain for hands that can help you get and stay sober so like us you know and know that you know now that it is available to anyone who wants to be clean and sober one day at a time for a life time. He also knows. Give him a hug...tell him you love him a lot and cannot save him even if you knew how because he doesn't want to be saved. I didn't have the courts telling my alcoholic/addict son that he had to stay in my home and so I divorced him and he ran until he couldn't anymore.
If telling could save a life?...would you not? (save a life/tell)...Courage to change the things I can file for me. Today I tell and before program I didn't.
Get real on your responsibilities picture...You had the wishes and expectations...he has the choices.
By the way genetics (one of my courses in college) has a ton to do with present day alcoholism and drug addiction. It started thousands of years before the birth of the Christ time line. We are an altered species. Keep coming back (((((hugs)))))
It took a lot of courage for you to wrestle with this issue, reach out and ask for others' ESH, and then make a new choice based on the facts you had at hand. I think it is especially hard for mothers to do this kind of thing since we have been our children's primary caregivers since infancy. We are so used to thinking of our children first, safeguarding their wellbeing, kissing their boo-boos, and doing what we can to help them enter adulthood it is a major transition to move from being nurturers to tough love. It is also very, very difficult to sort out for ourselves the way to go in relationship to the various systems that come into play when our kids choose to keep using especially knowing that ultimately, we are responsible for our choices, too, and must live with the consequences of our decisions as well. You have chosen to step out of what is familiar to you into what isn't - Wow! Way to go!!!
