Problems with 19 Year Old Son

PittDoraj

New Member
Wow. This is tough.

Thank you all for the words of encouragement and for sharing your experiences. I have found this to be very helpful in terms of ideas and providing strength.

My son came home last night after walking around town for 8 hours yesterday. It has turned cold here (20 degrees) and he said he had no where to go. I gave him two short term options: He should take his phone (that he left when he stormed out yesterday morning) and call around to find a place to stay, or he could spend the night at the house but I would drop him off somewhere in the morning when I left for work. He decided it was better to go somewhere else last night. As far as long term I reiterated two of the options I gave him yesterday morning: get help immediately or stay away from the house. He said he wanted to get help and that he would set something up today.

I really don't think he will follow up today to try to set something up. I think he was cold and miserable when he came by the house and was saying things in the hope that he would be able to come back - once he had his phone back he was okay to leave again and I think he probably spent the night with his pot smoking friend. By him having his phone at least I could verify that he had a place to stay. I assume he will be happy hanging around an apartment smoking pot, drinking beer, and playing video games.

In the meantime I will look for some sort of intensive out patient treatment program that I can suggest should he come around. I have put a call into his therapist to discuss. Until then, I can only wait.
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
I hope you deleted the credit card information from his phone before giving it back. If he is like my difficult child your suspicions that he just went to one of his pot smoking friends places is correct. Addicts love other addicts. There is no shortage of druggies who will help a "friend" out with a place to stay and pot to smoke, I call them polluters, they pollute everyone around them. They love company, it makes them feel powerful and they don't have to face the fact that they have a problem. They look at all the other pot smokers/drug users around them and think everyone is like them. What I hated worse when we kicked difficult child out was that she always found a drug house to flop in. If she had no place to go her bottom would have come sooner. Even her friends who knew she had a serious problem with drinking enabled her to get into more trouble.

Back to your situation, I hope you can find a treatment center to guide him to if he comes to you for help. You need to act as soon as the opportunity strikes. Trying to find a place after he is ready may be too late because they change their minds quickly. He probably has no idea where to go for help. I know my difficult child didnt know either. We woke her up one day and told her to get dressed that we had an appointment for an assessment at the substance abuse treatment center. Thankfully she went willingly but if she didn't we were prepared to tell her to leave right then.

by the way I think he needs inpatient treatment. In my experience I have rarely seen outpatient work unless the person is extremely motivated to change, which your son is not. He needs to be completely away from drugs and other bad influences for a significant period of time in order for his thinking to become clearer.

I think the most heartbreaking thing for a parent to hear is the words "I have no place else to go." My difficult child called us several times saying just that and each time I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. And yet those are the words that you need to hear before they are willing to get help.

Nancy
 

PittDoraj

New Member
I cleaned out his phone before giving it to him. So he has no money and no access to our credit cards. Of course I am checking on-line anyway.

I think my biggest problem regarding a program is that his doctors/therapist will not send him to an inpatient treatment for drugs or alcohol. They say he is not an addict, only an 'abuser'. So that adds another hurdle to overcome. Not only do I need for my son to acknowledge a problem with drugs , and I can afford it, I don't see how I can get him into that kind of a program.

He does acknowledge he has a problem with 'instant gratification' and relationships. He acknowledges that he doesn't care about others. However I don't think there is some sort of intensive program to deal with that (is there?).

My son has texted me this morning that he wants to come home an work something out. Since my wife is at home sick I told him to contact her. She told him she doesn't want to talk to him. I don't want to make this about me but I'm feeling like I am fighting an impossible battle now.

By the way, can someone tell me if there is a key to all the acronyms used on this forum?
 
My difficult child recently entered an inpatient rehab program for drugs and we did not have to get a referral from a doctor or therapist before he entered this program. I called several drug treatment centers when I was doing research and an intake person asked me a lot of questions about my son and his problems. Then I made an appointment with one program for an assessment, and I took my son for a meeting at the center. At the assessment the intake person asked my son a lot of questions (without me present), and of course they checked our insurance to see how much our insurance would cover for inpatient. This program approved my son for inpatient right after the assessment interview, and then they called us a day later to set up a start date for the program. I know that my son had to agree that he needed help with his drug problem before he could enter an inpatient program. I had to make 3 different appointments for the assessment before I could convince difficult child to actually get in the car and go to this appointment.
I hope that you can convince your son that he should go to an inpatient program. My son only agreed to go because he knew that he could walk out at any time, since it is not a lock down facility and he is 18 an supposed to be an adult. He would not have been clean of the drugs if he went to an outpatient program and then he had the rest of the day to hang out with his druggie friends and get high. My difficult child had to be in a place that was completely away from all his friends in order to be clean.

* I am still navigating my way around this forum, but I think that there is a FAQ page that lists all the acronyms on this forum. You can also send private messages, and if you want any more info about the inpatient programs that I found for my son, just PM me.
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
You do not need a dr referral to enter a substance abuse program. If you can afford it you will be welcome at any facility. If you believe there is a problem there is a problem. When our daughter went inpatient in a treatment facility we never even contacted her physician or pyschiatrist, we just called and made the arrangements and brought her in. If you have insurance they will try to get it to cover some of the charges but they don't cover much. We were a self pay on most of it.

Nancy
 
T

toughlovin

Guest
This idea that some people have that you are "not an addict, just an abuser" is a bunch of baloney. They are all on the same spectrum.... An addict by their definition is just further along in the addiction process. So maybe your son was not physically addicted to drugs (ie needs detox0 but is emotionally addicted. If he is using drugs to deal with his problems and in fact if they are getting in the way of him being successful in life then he is on the addiction spectrum in my book. I agree with others inpatient would be best. And my son has been in two inpatient rehabs and I think the good programs also deal with young adults whose drug of choice is pot... I think they see that a lot.

Feel free to PM me if you want to know the program my son was at. I was favorably impressed. I think sometimes there is an advantage to getting them really away from home and immersed in treatment for a period of time.

Keep us posted.

TL
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
Hi, welcome to the board, sorry you are here. I am not going to address the addiction vs using substances issues at this point. I am going to talk about what appears to be his blatant disregard for your rules and his stealing from you. I do think that your wife is right that you should file charges with the credit card companies. They will charge him with fraud. He will get felony's on his record. Dont feel too guilty because I am sure you told him no the first time you caught him doing it and he continued to do this to you. The sheer gall of using his cell phone to take a picture of your credit card so he would have the numbers...and maybe even sell them or hand them out to other people...is enough to make my hair stand on end.

My son did something very similar. He stole my check book several years ago and got me for just over a thousand dollars in 3 checks. I had my bank shred every single check I had in my house and I havent ordered anymore checks since then. I also filled out forgery affidavits and had him charged. He was arrested and now has 3 felony charges thanks to me pressing charges on him. It was the only way the bank was going to put the money back in my account. Oh sure I could have let him off and make him pay me back but that wouldnt have taught him one damn thing except for Momma dont mean what she says. After all, for years I had been telling him not to take my stuff and dont steal. I had to put my foot down. He actually is doing much better now. Its a shame it took all that to do it though.
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
When my difficult child went to the hospital during her last manipulative suicide attempt (she texted me that she had taken 20 Celexa . . . but backtracked to 8 when we got her to the hospital), the triage nurse told us that if she was drinking and taking pyschotropic drugs she had a substance abuse problem. Taking an anti-depressant and drinking can be deadly.

This all happened after she was kicked out of our home for taking a credit card out of my purse and buying beer and cigarettes. She had stolen before that, too.

This time she knew that we meant it and pulled out all of the stops. It was the best thing that could have happened, though. When we stood fast that she couldn't return, she checked herself into a community health rehab center for 30 days. Now she is living in a halfway house and seems to be doing well.

She went into rehab to "prove" to us that she didn't have a substance abuse problem. She is now attending NA and AA meetings on a regular basis and admits that she has addiction issues. She, too, has been told that she is not an "addict" but uses prescription pills and alcohol to self -medicate. However, the combination is deadly and has kept her from functioning so whether you call her an addict or not, she obviously needs to stay away from mood altering substances.

There is much more to our sad story but I just wanted to let you know that you do not have to live with an adult (and 19 is an adult) that lies and steals from you. in my opinion, you need to support your wife and take a united stand. He gets help in inpatient rehab or finds somewhere else to live.

One cautionary note. . . in some states (like mine), you cannot just kick your child out if he has lived with you in the past 30 days. You actually have to go through the eviction process. We got around that by telling our difficult child that she needed to leave our house voluntarily or we would prosecute her for the credit card theft.

I also need to save my sanity, my marriage, and my daughter deserves a reasonable living situation as well.

I couldn't agree with you more.

~Kathy
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
I had never heard the distinction between addict and addiction before some members started discussing it here. I have always believed that if alcohol or drugs is causing a problem in your life you are an addict. I am surprised to hear all the professionals who claim that difficult child's are not addicted. I don't know what they are basing that on. The difficult child is lying, stealing, losing their jobs, getting suspended or failing school, not coming home, hanging with druggies, being disrespectful and sometimes violent at home, breaking the law, etc......and they are not an addict? So why are they continuing to use then? If they aren't an addict or addicted to the substance then they are just bad people....and I don't believe that. Heck my father was a serious alcoholic. He drank every weekend and stumbled home only to fight with my mother all through the night. Yet he never missed a day of work and was able to stop drinking without physical withdrawal symptoms, alcohol caused huge problems in his life.

Kathy the law is usually if your young adult pays rent then you have to go through the eviction process. I specifically asked one of th emany police that came to our house this question. The night we kicked our difficult child out we had to call the police to get her to leave and they told her she was an adult and if we didn't want her to be there anymore she had to leave. It may be different in other states.

Nancy
 

Kathy813

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Nancy, I think it is different depending on where you live. My difficult child was not paying rent and the police knew that. The said if the person has been living there for a given period of time (I think it was 30 days) and has clothes there then they have established residency and that we needed to go through the eviction process to get her to leave. My difficult child knew the law (told to her by other difficult child's) and threw it in our faces but I didn't believe it until the police verified it.

We have since heard it from the police several times when we were trying to get out difficult child to leave. I know that others on the board have had similar stories so I think it varies depending on where you live.

~Kathy
 

PittDoraj

New Member
I cannot tell you how much this forum has helped me cope over the last two days. Thank you all for taking the time to convey your stories and suggestions.

I spoke with my sons therapist yesterday for two hours (my son signed the waiver to allow us to share with the therapist). The therapist works for a well established hospital in the Psychiatric Institute, Addiction Medicine Services, Center for Psychiatric and Chemical Dependency. I believe he is well qualified to assess the situation and has been meeting with my son since his suicide attempt in October. His assessment (which he says he has reviewed with his peers) is that my alcohol and drugs use are a symptom with my son. Not a primary problem. The therapist feels my son has a lot of anger (although he has not ever been violent) built up towards the world in general and he says his parents (my wife and I) as representative of the 'establishment' (my word). To summarize - my son is very smart and has very logical and well thought out philosophical ideas, but he is immature. He also sabotages his life by doing things like stealing to play video games, drinking/pot to 'be happy' at the moment, sneaking out to rebel against us, etc. The question is why does he feel such strong feelings about us (his parents) and why does he sabotage himself? The therapist suggests going from once a week to twice a week individual therapy and starting family therapy sessions as well. Of course this sounds reasonable and I will do anything I can - my concern is how will that change his behavior, particularly in the short term? And where does he live until that happens?

I have decided to continue to look for facilities that treat dual problems but with an emphasis on the behavioral issues. I can only have these as suggestions to make to my son since I can't force him to go - I can only use the living at home option as incentive. I also am waiting to suggest anything to him until I see him make a concrete effort to help himself. I know he is staying in some girls apartment and he says he has food. I'm sure she will get tired of him within a few days and he could just move on to the next persons place to hang out. I can see this going on for a couple of weeks. My hope is eventually he sees that there is no future in that and he sincerely agrees to address his problems.
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
It's good that you were able to have such an in depth session with his therapist. I agree it sounds like your son has a dual diagnosis. My daughter does too, her issues did not start at age 14 when she began using pot and drinking. She also had a lot of anger toward us and lived for the moment. She is very impulsive and does not think about or care about consequences. All I can tell you is that she couldn't begin to work on those things until the chemical dependency was addressed. It was almost as if we had to wait until she became dependent on alcohol and pot before she could get help, stop using, and take an indepth look at her life to figure out how to fix it. She is now a very different person than she has ever been. She is respectful towards us, does not ask for anything or feel entitled, is responsible in holding her job and living on her own, does not get angry at the drop of a hat and seems to be more comfortable in her skin now. That doesn't mean she is home free. I believe she will have to work on herself for the rest of her life if she wants to stay sober and be happy. difficult child did see many therapists, psychiatrists, addiction specialists over the years. None of them really knew how to get her change. Once she stopped using she wanted things to be different. She finally realized she hated the way she was living.

I truly hope that the additional therapy sessions help. Hopefully the therapist will engage him in aggressive therapy or else he will just linger for years and nothing will be different. Of course he has to want to change and until he sees he does not have to use chemical substances to be happy that won't happen.

Please keep us posted on what is happening. You will have good days and bad days in this journey, but hopefully for every step backward he begins to take two forward.

Nancy
 

PittDoraj

New Member
Well, things have taken a turn for the worse. I will be brief in my recap.

My son returned home with the "I don't have a place to go" story. He said he realizes his 'friends' aren't really friends, etc., and he needed a place to stay. We allowed him to stay in part because my wife and I had a weekend trip planned (for a couple of months) that was not easy to change since it involved meeting out of state family/friends and college bowl games. We talked at length with my son and daughter and everyone agreed to how things would work. Son could sleep in the house as long as there were no problems but could not stay there alone.

At 11pm I received a call from my daughter saying she thought something was going on, that he was leaving the house for ten minutes and returning (a couple of times). My son told me this wasn't the case and he was having a friend (a "approved" one in our book) over. At 5am I received a text from my daughter saying she couldn't deal with him. In the morning she found 3 bottles of vodka (1 nearly empty and 2 full) in the bushes beside the house. I questioned my son who reluctantly confessed that he traded video games for the vodka. He said he agreed he needed help. I told him once we were home we would arrange things (we have investigated a couple of facilities). We told him, per the agreement we had, that he had to find a place to stay since this wasn't fair to his sister. He agreed.

Later that day (yesterday) he called to say that under no circumstances would he go to a in-patient facility, he did not have a problem, and wanted $450 and he would be out of our life. We told him we would get a hotel room for him and his sister would give the cash to the hotel clerk when he checked in. (No way would we give the cash to him nor hold a room with a credit card). We said we would give $100 this way so he had a place for two nights. We called to find a local place and his sister took him there. However there was a misunderstanding with the hotel clerk (rate was $80) and we told my son/daughter to wait and we would get another hotel lined up - which we did in about 5 minutes. My son decided not to wait and took off on foot. He then texted my wife to say he can't believe he wasn't worth an extra $30 and that he was done with us. I texted him to say you have "chosen" to ignore the help we offered and he should go back to the house so we could arrange something (at this point it was around 6pm and there was no way for us to return home that night). I then received a text from him - "I've chosen to die. F* off".

After 30 minutes of unanswered texts and phone calls I asked my wife to call the police. She was against it but she did it because she could see I was distraught. She felt he was not going to hurt himself. The police said they would keep an eye out for him and would talk to him if they saw him. They called my daughter to get the story and asked her to call them if he came home. Another hour later he arrived on our porch but left before my daughter let him in and my daughter called the police - the police then found him a street away. They called us to say he ran from them so they detained him. They called for an ambulance and he told them he was depressed and had suicidal thoughts. He was taken to the local hospital. We cancelled the rest of our plans and are returning home now - should be back by 2pm - hospital visitation goes until 4. I called the hospital this morning to see if he was there (since he is 19 the hospital will give us no info) and if he was committed by police or voluntarily. My son got on the phone and said "give me one reason why I shouldn't hang up on you. I told you I never wanted to be back in a place like this" and he hung up on me before I could respond. I will go there for visitation and I am sure he will not see me. I will also see if the staff will give me any indication on the status of his situation and be sure they know what medication he is on.

So now I have wife, family, and friends telling me I should have done things differently. Shouldn't have left, shouldn't have told him to leave, shouldn't have called the police. My wife is convinced if we had just gone on our way he would have returned home and not hurt himself. I guess I will never know but all I can do is hope that he will eventually talk to me again, and that my wife (and others) will understand the juggling act I feel I am failing to perform!
 
T

toughlovin

Guest
It is always so hard to know what to do, you can only do the best you can in the moment... the2nd guessing yourself is useless because you have no idea what would have happened if you did something differently.

I think you did pretty well under the circumstances. My two thoughts are I think having him stay at home under the circumstances would have been very hard on your daughter. I don't remember how old she is but my memory is she is in her 20's.... still a lot of responsibility to fall on her shoulders. So by telling her to callt he police it put it off her shoulders on to the police and that shows some support for her and her position. That is a good thing.

The other thing is he was making suicidal gestures, not only to you but to the polce. Those always have to be taken seriously and the right thing to do in that situation is to call the police. I don't see how you can be faulted for that decision. You were not with him at the time so you could not judge how serious he was... and the police felt it was enough to take him to the hospital.

Are you and your wife basically on the same page? It doesn't completely sound like it and that is very difficult.

TL
 
PittDoraj: I am so sorry for everything that you are going through with your son. You were doing the best that you could with this situation, and trying to take care of your son from long distance. I don't think that it is fair of your wife or anyone else to criticize you for what happened to your son. No one has the perfect answer for every crisis, including your wife and the rest of the family. You should not feel like you are failing everybody when you are doing the very best that you could under an extremely difficult situation.

I agree with Toughlovin that anyone who talks about suicide has to be taken seriously. I am so glad that the police were able to find your son, and not he is in a place where he is safe. He is very angry right now, but hopefully with time he will calm down and realize that you were trying to help him. I hope that you are able to talk to the doctors who are treating your son, so that you can come up with a plan to help him get better. Do you have any idea how long he will remain in the hospital?

I will keep you son in my prayers, and I am sending you good wishes so that both you and your wife can find a way to be united in helping your son. Please keep posting here, because there are many people here who understand and can offer you support. Hugs...
 

Nancy

Well-Known Member
No matter what you did the outcome would not have been good. If you ignored it and let him stay home your daughter would be in the middle of a bad situation and who knows what would have happened after he drank three bottles of vodka. He was making threats of suicide and those should not be taken lightly. We called the police when our difficult child did that also. She had to understand that we took it seriously. How dare your son do that when he knew you had a trip planned and he agreed to the rules ahead of time. It just shows how serious his substance abuse is. He cannot control it and will make any promises he has to in order to continue using.

It is very important that you and your wife show a united front to him. If he thinks you are at all divided he will use that to his benefit. I think you and your wife should have a conference with his therapist for guidance on how to proceed. The sooner you get him into treatment the better.

Since he is 19 he can refuse to go but then he may have to find somewhere else to live. You have to be prepared to draw the line in the sand and stick to it even if he makes threats or you fear something bad happening. Something bad is already happening.

Our difficult child did much the same. Promised everything we asked of her and then went right out and did her drinking/pot smoking. She couldn't stop. At one point she told us to give her her car and she would be out of our lives for good. Are you kidding me? We were not going to give her a weapon to use on the road.

You are going through a very difficult time and there is no good answer except to somehow get your son into treatment. That may mean he has to be homeless before he accepts that. But it is not fair to your daughter to have to live this way either.

I know the panic and confusion you feel. Whatever you do you are doing to help him so don't second guess yourself. I'm sorry your trip was ruined.

Nancy
 
Last edited:

ying and yang

New Member
I would advise you to do NOTHING. You are writing about MY Son.
Son started to smoke weed laced with cocaine at 16. In the duration of 9 years I did ALL possible and impossible for him to get better. I spended Thousands hundreds of dollars for apartment's, hotels, motels, rehabs, half way house, quarter houses, emergencies (ER),colleges, dorms, rescues, mission, places for troubled teens in Costa Rica (we live in Florida).My son was in Detoxes 7 times, 19 times arrested for drug possession and drug peraph..,strong arm robbery,petite theft.

He burned himself with a cigarettes, did prostitution for old males with fetishes, threw a furniture out of the window, wanted to jump from the balcony, threatened suicide a lot, was Baker acted, March man Acted, was in psychiatric hospital for 3 month. It was 9 years of Agony and nothing helped in MY case. Son currently lives on the street, looking like a zombie. His legs were almost amputated due to severe infection. He looks like a walking death. He money pan handling or entertains the tourists for money, since he is very humorous. Son told me that he will use drugs until his heart will stop bitting. He is a white boy in a very African-American neighborhood most of the time. His drug of choice is crack and alcohol. Son is the worst of the worst. He is the type who lives under the bridge.

My advice would be to do NOTHING or you child will drag you in to the HELL!!! I also have 10 y.o son who is adorable. I waste almost 10 years of my life trying to fix things. Every time Son call me I tell him " I love you, go to Detox and thats it......"
 

buddy

New Member
Sorry for the serious issues. Having already had a board member's son attempt suicide this month, I think that speaks to what everyone here has said, you can just never ever not take a suicide threat lightly. You were not there to see him directly to supervise him, and he is too old for that anyway. You did what you had to do in my opinion. Take care, let us know how he is. HUGS

PS (I think another family had discussed something like this a few months ago...sometimes when difficult child does not want to talk, etc...they can be starting to do things on their own) I was in E.D. treatment as a young adult and did not want my parents to have info. I had no conflict with them, so it was different in that sense, but I just felt this was on me. I owuld not let any info out or in for quite a while. I realize this is very different but his needing to problem solve on his own can be a good thing. Does not mean he can't ask for and receive help, but it is on him to come up with a plan and if he asks, it should be reasonable to everyone..not demanding.
 
Top