getting stronger........

My new topic is getting stronger. I hope I am. Thanks. My difficult child went to voc rehab. They told him he needed inpatient treatment. He was mad. He blamed it on me beacause I said something to his counselor. Actually I told her the truth about everything. He said he did not need inpatient. He also told her that the rehab she was thinking about sending him was the only one that EVER HELPED him. We will see. I go to my counselor tonight. My difficult child just called from a "friends" house about 15 minutes away and asked me if I could come get him. His tooth was hurting!!!!!!!!
 

everywoman

Well-Known Member
Good for you. It takes a lot of strength to deal with an addict. Especially one who is mixing drugs. I wrote a long response to one of your last posts---but it got lost in cyber space somewhere. I am also in South Carolina.

Your son sounds much like mine. He is also involved in the justice system, is on parole, and I suspect he is still using marijuana. Mine is also behind on his fines and fees. If I'm right your son is using pain pills and xanex. That is the same combo that my son was using the last time he was arrested. I hope that voc-rehab can help. I have sent difficult child, but...I tried to let him handle it himself.

Right now mine is behaving---doesn't have much choice. No license---no friends (he either stole from them or they've grown up!). He is going to tech---voc rehad was supposed to be helping---but I haven't seen anything from them. I made him borrow the money in his name because I will not foot the bill for him anymore!
 

WhymeMom?

No real answers to life..
I thought this was the wisdom tooth that he had pulled? Seems he is having alot of trouble with it, phantom pains?......or is this just an excuse?
 
I dont know! I picked him up about 5:30 at a grocery store. I went to my counseling appointment. at 6:50. He called the dentist. I told him I would get his antibiotic and advil and call the dentist. I got home - he is gone. I see he took a shower and changed clothes. He is not with the guy he spent the night with last night and he is not with another guy that drives him places. How can he just run around when his tooth hurts so bad? why didnt he stay here and see what we could do?
 

meowbunny

New Member
Because his goal wasn't to help the tooth. His goal was to get drugs. If the dentist helps him, he loses that excuse. Of course, I'm sure he will find another.

I'm sorry he can't see that he truly needs inpatient treatment. I hope you and his counselor can find a way to convince him how much he needs this. I hope you can find a way to get the strength to give him no choice.
 

Sunlight

Active Member
a lot of people go to the dentist to try and get drugs. they dont treat the tooth, they go from one dentist to another and complain and ask to have drugs, then be resched for a tooth extraction. they never come to get it out.
 

scent of cedar

New Member
It's a long, slow process (at least, for me it was) to understand, to really get it, that our sons are addicted, Stands. It hurts too much to acknowledge it to ourselves because if it is true, then we are helpless. When we first considered addiction (thanks to the parents on this site ~ we knew difficult child was using drugs prior to my finding the site, but considered it "recreational"). Anyway, when we first came to believe what we were seeing with our son was the result, not of drug use, but of addiction ~ and there is a difference, a big one ~ we envisioned him to be trapped behind this huge glass wall. We could hear him screaming, we could see everything that was happening to him?

But he could not hear us.

And we could not get in there to help him.

It's a hard, horrible thing for a parent to realize.

Another image that fit for us was that our son had been caught by a crocodile ~ even if we get him out of there, the infection from that filthy, reptilian mouth may still kill him.

And whatever flesh the crocodile stripped away was gone, forever.

So, it is very, very hard to be the parent of a child addicted to drugs.

You are making great strides in understanding what is happening to your son.

When I pray?

It is for strength.

And sometimes, I pray for the ability to continue to believe in my son ~ to continue to believe for him that he can come back from this.

You are doing just fine, Stands.

Acknowledging the nature of the things our addicted children are trapped in is tough.

Keep posting.

I have gained the strength here to face what needed to be faced, and I have learned what words I need to say.

Through the site, I have been able to learn how to help my husband understand, and for both of us, how to survive, how to keep our marriage intact, in the face of this horrible something that happened to our family.

You will make it through this time too, Stands.

It's really hard, though.

Barbara
 
Barbara I am trying. I went to my counselor last night. She said I need to be honest with hisprobation officer too. Because I am concerned for his life. Also that he doctor that prescribes Xanax for him needs to know he abuses it. I havent heard from him since yesterday. The friends I know that he may be with havent seen him. There are a few others that he may be with but I have no way to know how to get in touch with them. It worries me - because I was not here when he left. If you read Watercooler my post is Q - I am having issues with my daughters wedding!! All I need. You should read those posts too! I need to pray for strength. I always do - I am just weary. I wonder if I should call anyone else to try and find him. My husband always says no - he says he will show up sooner or later.
 

goldenguru

Active Member
Ya know SWC ...

what your son is doing (leaving home ... not coming home and not calling to tell you where he is) is incredibly inconsiderate. He is using your family home as a he would a hotel ... well except in a hotel he would be required to pay for his keep.

It is civil behavior to let those you live with know where you are and when/if you'll be home.

Have you considered how he is taking advantage of you and your good graces??
 

scent of cedar

New Member

When is the wedding, Stands?

I think you need to give yourself permission to be a mom whose daughter is getting married until one week after the wedding.

This should be a special time and drugs ~ not difficult child but whatever drug he has been using the past few days ~ are taking that away from you and from your daughter, too.

And from husband and easy child.

Stupid drugs.

And difficult child will not stop putting them into his mouth.

He knows what he is doing, he has to know how important a milestone this wedding is for the entire family ~ but he will not stop putting those crappy drugs into his system.

His choice.

Now, you need to make a choice, too.

You can let the drugs shrivel the wonder of this time in your life, and in the lives of every member of your family, or you can make a different choice.

You can decide, not to turn difficult child away or read him the riot act or anything else having to do with difficult child, but to cherish this time in your life, and in the life of your family.

There is a rhythm to the life of a family.

This should be a time of fruition for you and your husband.

That is what difficult child's addiction is destroying.

So many of us here on the site have had to learn to choose joy, Stands, whatever is going on with our addicted child.

You can pick that, too.

But you have to be really cold to do it.

Choose not to worry about difficult child today.

No mourning difficult child today.

Today is one of the last days your daughter is your daughter first. After the wedding, she will be someone's wife and then, someone's mother.

You will never have this time with your daughter again.

You will never have these last days before your daughter becomes a married woman, with a married woman's responsibilities, to share with your husband, again.

The two of you should take your daughter to a fancy dinner with your other children. Or to pizza, or for pizza at home ~ whatever you can afford. Talk and laugh and remember your family to each other. Remember all the good times, all the Christmases and birthdays and the times you laughed and were so in love with each other.

You deserve that Stands, but more importantly, your husband and your other children deserve to have that good time with you.

Don't let difficult child's addiction reach in and destroy the heart of your family.

What happened to difficult child is a tragedy. Name it and move away from it. difficult child's addiction is a separate, painful entity.

Don't let it ruin these last few weeks for your family.

The addiction will still be there after the wedding, when this precious, never to be done again time is passed.

Your daughter needs to be proud, and strong, and cherished as she enters her new life.

Don't let difficult child's addiction tarnish that.

Tell difficult child that you love him, but you are not going to let this stupid drug addiction infect this wonderful time for your family.

Keep that as your watchword during this time.

Otherwise, when you look back on this time in your family, all you will have is remembrance of difficult child's stupid drug addiction.

Choose not to let the drugs steal this time from you or from your family.

You are the mom.

You need to protect the rest of the family from difficult child's stupid addiction to drugs.

Drugs kill everything they touch.

Your job as the mom is to keep the rest of the family safe from the effects of the drugs.

I love my son?

But I hate the drugs, and the lost time and the pain and the sadness they have cost ME.

Make another choice, Stands.

Be cold.

Be the mother to your other children, and the wife to your husband, who protects your family.

How we make it through these times has so much to do with where we stand and how we see what is happening to us.

Even if you don't mean it, Stands?

Carry on as normally as you can with the rest of your family.

Don't let the drugs destroy that, too.

Keep posting.

It helps so much.

Barbara
 

everywoman

Well-Known Member
You have come such a long way Barb. Wow!!! Stands---remember his choices are not yours. It is his life. It's hard to watch your child be a drug addict---but you will make yourself crazy thinking you can control HIS addiction. You can only control your reactions to his actions. Make choices that are the best for you and the non-addicts in your life.
 
OK Today has been a good day for difficult child so far. He has been here not high but worried about his probation. He looked for a job with no success. He gets bored and that is when he seeks out substance to relieve the boredom. When i am around him during that time I try to relieve his boredom and take it upon myself. That is what makes me nervous. When he is here i hate to leave him. we will go to voc rehab next week as a family and talk about options. somehow somewhere someone should listen to our struggles. pray for that. thanks
 

scent of cedar

New Member
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: standswithcourage</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

He gets bored and that is when he seeks out substance to relieve the boredom.


</div></div>

Stands, you need to think about what you would write to another mother looking for help, had she posted these words.

If you rationalize or excuse your son's drug use, you make it that much easier for him to rationalize it to himself.

And you make it that much harder for him to stop.

Did HE tell you he seeks out substance to relieve the boredom?

You could say the same sentence in the following way: he finds, buys and uses drugs to get high because that is the only thing that doesn't bore him.

All work is honorable (as our wise Pony posted once). Your son would find work if he had to.

You are making it very easy for him not to do that.

Stands, if I could go back and do one thing differently where my difficult child is concerned, it would be to wake up to what was happening to him sooner.

I might have been able to save him, then.

Instead, I lost my son, Stands.

Today, my son is still gone. A bright, gentle, attractive man did not come into the world, did not contribute all he might have, because I refused to see what was right in front of me to be seen.

You can save your son, Stands ~ twenty-four is late, but maybe not too late.

But time is passing.

Have you attended an Al-Anon or a Narc-Anon meeting?

Have you done any internet searches to learn about the physiology of addiction?

Whichever substance it is that your son finds most helpful in relieving his boredom ~ have you made it your business to learn what that substance is doing to his brain?

Drugs wring the good chemicals out of our brains like someone wringing liquid out of a sponge, Stands. With the good chemicals used up by the blow-it-all-at-once drug high, the brain of the drug abuser goes into a kind of depressed mode we can only imagine. Eventually, the same amount of the drug does not make him high anymore ~ it only relieves the feeling of jangling depression caused by the depletion of the good chemicals.

Addiction does not end well, Stands.

Never.

It will kill your son ~ if not immediately, then soon enough.

My son is thirty two now, Stands.

Do you have any idea what I would give to go back to the time I wasted when he was still only twenty-four?

Do some research, Stands. Whatever drug it is that your child chooses, research the nature of addiction to that set of chemicals.

Your boy is in trouble.

You may not be able to help him.

But if you are ever going to make a difference for him, you need to tell him the truth.

Your son needs to go into treatment.

Check out Teen Challenge and Hazelden on the internet, Stands.

Know that I wish your son well.

Barbara
 
Barbara - He is supposed to go into a treatment program in our city. The counselor at Voc Rehab said he needed it and long term. My son has balked but he said if he had to go he would. Sometimes his behavior is not as bad as it used to be and I think maybe he is coming around but if he wasnt here what would he do? I am going to a counseling meeting at Voc Rehab where we will talk about options for mygfg. I believe we should stick with treatment.

Goldenguru - I dont know why I feel it is my responsibility. It drives me crazy to try and keep him occupied so he want feel the need to do something stupid. Yesterday I didnt do anything I wanted to because I hated to leave him home by himself. So I stayed here - I went to the grocery store just to buy a few things - he went with me - I told him from the beginning I didnt have much money - he says he wants a 12 pack of beer - I said no - he puts it in the buggy - we leave! I was so frustrated. He is on medication and doesnt need to drink and he is not going to at my house. I cant do this all the time.
 

jbrain

Member
Stands,
you are enabling him big time! You are not responsible for keeping him entertained and he will not learn how to entertain himself if you take it on as your job. The more you do for him the less he will do for himself. He has no reason to change--you have taken it upon yourself to make it your responsibility, not his. I have very simple advice--kick him out and don't look back.
Sorry,
Jane

P.S. My God, he is 24 yrs old! Some of us have had to kick out 18 yr old females!
 

Suz

(the future) MRS. GERE
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">he says he wants a 12 pack of beer - I said no - he puts it in the buggy - we leave! </div></div>

huh?

I hope you took it OUT of the buggy before you left- you did, didn't you?

Susan, it's no wonder you are frustrated. You are spinning your wheels. You continue to get all kinds of great advice here from Moms who have been there done that. You acknowledge the great advice, even give lip service to it... then change nothing.

I don't get it. :hammer:

Suz
 
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