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Substance Abuse
17 year old son has us feeling trapped
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<blockquote data-quote="UpandDown" data-source="post: 702714" data-attributes="member: 19025"><p>Concerned parent,</p><p></p><p>I have been exactly where you are with my now 17 year old son. I can feel your pain and I so very sorry for your pain. It is a nightmare where friends drop away very quickly. A quick summary of my story... My son is very bright but has always found it difficult to follow through on school work. We had high expectations for him as all of our children. He has one immediately older sister and 2 younger. He had lots of friends and was a strong athlete that played both travel and schools sports.</p><p></p><p> He recently told me that this all started when he asked another kid in school one day who was known to smoke pot if it helped with sadness. I had no idea he was sad but apparently this set in motion the desire to try pot. He did and thus began our hell. We went through the verbal abuse, the kicking and punching of holes in the walls, broken dishes, you name it. Usually this was in response to me intercepting a text about buying pot, or finding his stash and flushing it down the toilet. Any consequence ended in this. He would also smoke in the house. I would walk upstairs and smell a strange skunk smell and he would flip out and the pattern went on and on. He dropped out of sports and barely passed school. We were on him all the time and I felt my life draining away with the load of it all. I have young daughters and the responsibility of sheltering them was very very difficult. We did several things that over time have begun to stick and he is way way better than he was. We still have a major hurdle of getting him to graduation in June and we continue to work with him. </p><p></p><p> We did send him to wilderness therapy and I am not sure I would do that again and it didn't really stop the pot smoking. It was outrageously expensive. Who knows what might have happened if we didn't though as he was demonstrating extremely reckless behavior before we did that. He was sneaking out and night and running away and we were scared for his life. Wilderness therapy did end that. After a few months of coming home, he started smoking again and slowly the verbal abuse began, etc. So this time we filed a CHINS (Child in need of service) with the local court. They rejected that we needed a CHINS but instead we filed a complaint against him for destruction of property. We did have a police report of one time when he got so angry that he broke a window and I called the police. I do think we needed this paper trail to set things in motion. They assigned him a probation officer and a long list of things he had to complete. 50 hours of community service, random drug testing, weekly anger management classes , and weekly therapy. If he was able to fulfill all of these, it would never be on his record. He did all of them and actually found that he enjoyed volunteering. Of course, all of it was a lot of driving for me and honestly a lot of work on the parents to push him to do it all. Yet, I think he was scared straight for a long time. That was a year ago. We also only pay for his necessities. He pays his own cell phone through prepaid cards and pays for his own gas and car insurance. He has a job to pay for what he wants. He is not all the way there yet as he still smokes but he has accepted that it is not allowed here and I have accepted that I can't control what he chooses to do away from here. He knows if he drives high, then he loses the chance to drive. We have had times where we did disable the car because he was that brazen too. We do still pay for twice monthly therapy for him and that is incredibly helpful for him. </p><p></p><p>It sounds like you are working very hard to set boundaries with him. I dont think one thing magically works. For us it was a combination of taking away all "handouts", intensive therapy for all of us, and getting the courts involved.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="UpandDown, post: 702714, member: 19025"] Concerned parent, I have been exactly where you are with my now 17 year old son. I can feel your pain and I so very sorry for your pain. It is a nightmare where friends drop away very quickly. A quick summary of my story... My son is very bright but has always found it difficult to follow through on school work. We had high expectations for him as all of our children. He has one immediately older sister and 2 younger. He had lots of friends and was a strong athlete that played both travel and schools sports. He recently told me that this all started when he asked another kid in school one day who was known to smoke pot if it helped with sadness. I had no idea he was sad but apparently this set in motion the desire to try pot. He did and thus began our hell. We went through the verbal abuse, the kicking and punching of holes in the walls, broken dishes, you name it. Usually this was in response to me intercepting a text about buying pot, or finding his stash and flushing it down the toilet. Any consequence ended in this. He would also smoke in the house. I would walk upstairs and smell a strange skunk smell and he would flip out and the pattern went on and on. He dropped out of sports and barely passed school. We were on him all the time and I felt my life draining away with the load of it all. I have young daughters and the responsibility of sheltering them was very very difficult. We did several things that over time have begun to stick and he is way way better than he was. We still have a major hurdle of getting him to graduation in June and we continue to work with him. We did send him to wilderness therapy and I am not sure I would do that again and it didn't really stop the pot smoking. It was outrageously expensive. Who knows what might have happened if we didn't though as he was demonstrating extremely reckless behavior before we did that. He was sneaking out and night and running away and we were scared for his life. Wilderness therapy did end that. After a few months of coming home, he started smoking again and slowly the verbal abuse began, etc. So this time we filed a CHINS (Child in need of service) with the local court. They rejected that we needed a CHINS but instead we filed a complaint against him for destruction of property. We did have a police report of one time when he got so angry that he broke a window and I called the police. I do think we needed this paper trail to set things in motion. They assigned him a probation officer and a long list of things he had to complete. 50 hours of community service, random drug testing, weekly anger management classes , and weekly therapy. If he was able to fulfill all of these, it would never be on his record. He did all of them and actually found that he enjoyed volunteering. Of course, all of it was a lot of driving for me and honestly a lot of work on the parents to push him to do it all. Yet, I think he was scared straight for a long time. That was a year ago. We also only pay for his necessities. He pays his own cell phone through prepaid cards and pays for his own gas and car insurance. He has a job to pay for what he wants. He is not all the way there yet as he still smokes but he has accepted that it is not allowed here and I have accepted that I can't control what he chooses to do away from here. He knows if he drives high, then he loses the chance to drive. We have had times where we did disable the car because he was that brazen too. We do still pay for twice monthly therapy for him and that is incredibly helpful for him. It sounds like you are working very hard to set boundaries with him. I dont think one thing magically works. For us it was a combination of taking away all "handouts", intensive therapy for all of us, and getting the courts involved. [/QUOTE]
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