The latest on our rollercoaster ride....

[toughlovin]

Hi all,

Well difficult child called me on my cell today. I knew when I saw it was him calling something was up because he usually texts me....When I asked how he was doing he said horrible. Apparently they think he is still using and he says he has not used for the last week and a half since he has been in the more restrictive place. Apparently they drug tested him again and he still showed positive I assume for Spice. They said it only stays in his system up to 48 hours. He was adamant that he hadnt used, but said he used a lot before he was caught.

He sounded sincere, and upset, and so a part of me believes him.... and a part of me doesn't because I know he lies... although usually when he screws up like this he doesn't call me... but yeah if that was the only way he thought he could get what he wanted he certainly would. I also know that testing for spice is pretty new so it might be possible it would still show as positive.

They told him something about having to go to treatment..... or leave I assume. We have not yet heard from them. He doesn't think he needs treatment because he didn't use and in fact he doesn't think they will take him because he thinks he will test clean. I suggested going back to treatment as an option and he sort of said why that doesn't make sense.

He was mad at the place and was starting to get heated at me.... although not impolitely if you know what I mean.

I stayed calm and at one point I said I was just brainstorming ideas. I asked him what he wanted me to do. I really think he was hoping I would sort of figure out where he could go. He said he wanted to go to a different place etc. I finally said look I am done trying to figure out where you should go and find the place for you. All we want is for you to be in recovery (if I had read that article maybe I would have said in discovery_... and you need to figure out the best way to do that.

I asked him if he was seeing a therapist and he said he was in the IOP program and he was going tonight. So I said talk to the therapist and figure out what the best thing to do is. You need to be the one to find another place but we are willing to help with the finances.... so when you find something else call and talk to us about it.

So he texted me tonight.... said he has found another place with a bunch of services. I asked him a bunch of questions and now I haven't heard back from him. I may call him before we go to bed tonight.

I did ask him if he now thought he had a drug problem. He said "Sure" in a way that was just agreeing but not meaning it. I called him on it and asked him again. He said I am not sure.

I know I probably sound like I am backing down from my strong stand.... but as I read that book Nancy suggested and thought about it I do want to support him in recovery. I know he is probably not really committed to it, but forcing him on the street when he is still willing to go to a place for help does not seem like the right thing to do. Especially with those 3 deaths i read about, I am feeling kind of scared. I just dont want to indirectly push him into more drug use if you know what I mean.

I do need to know about the place he would go... it does need to be a sober living place. And we definitely won't pay for him to come back here.

So we shall see what happens next and which direction we go on that roller coaster.

TL

 

[DammitJanet]

TL....I have a question and I am probably going to sound mean and I really dont want to come off that way so please dont take it that way...OK?

How long are you going to be willing to fund this lifestyle when it seems to my outsiders eye that he really doesnt want to work a program for anything other than a place to live. I really dont think he has stopped smoking either pot or spice. Whichever one he can get his hands on. If he is using spice and it is supposedly out of his system in 48 hours, then he is flat out lying to you. He has been in there well long enough for it to leave his system. Now pot would still be there but if they use the same drug testing systems they use where I get mine done, the cups register in strips right on the cups and then they also send them off to a lab to confirm the test.

I can understand your fear....boy can I. I know this might be controversial but considering he doesnt seem to want to follow any program because he seems to have a touch of ODD going on and not believing he has a substance abuse problem, it may be that your money may be better spent setting him up in a really cheap apartment or mobile home somewhere down there where he can get access to some of the resources and then pay for first, last and the deposit and tell him he had better find a job because you are not paying anything else. He may just step up to the plate. Who knows. Just a thought. Like I said, I have no clue with this but it is what we did and it worked.

 

[toughlovin]

Its a good question Janet. I really don't know to be honest. I don't believe there is any over the counter test for spice... I think that has to be done at the lab which is why a lot of places dont test for it. My difficult child did say several people had false positives... but who really knows. You are probably right he is probably lying to us.

I do not want to do as you suggest and set him up in an apt with first/last months rent. I think that is a definite set up to fail. We thought of doing that way back when he was here.... but I am not going to do that now.

I don't want to do anything that will definitely send him further down the road of hard drug use and I think the apartment idea would do that.

The thing is I think a part of him really does want help.... I still remember him saying to me when he was in the pscyh hospital that he wants to stop being miserable. The problem is I think for him the only way he knows how to do that is with drugs. He is really lost and needs the structure and help of something and I think a part of him wants that.

He has more than a touch of ODD..... hence my search for "conduct disorder" which got me to this site. LOL.

I am feeling anxious about all of it... and clearly need to wait until I hear more from somebody.

I do know that we are not willing to pay big bucks for the really expensive luxurious treatment places that costs thousands of dollars a month.... what we are paying now for the sober living is similar to rent up here... so yeah it adds up but we can manage it. We would be paying more in expenses if he was living away at college.

I just don't know.... I am at a loss right now... maybe I will go back to bed for awhile.

TL

 

[Nancy]

TL,

This may be hard to hear but it's what I really believe and I believe it for my own difficult child too. He is still using. Spice can be detected in the urine up to 72 hours after use. From what I understand they can't detect the actual spice use but they detect its parent drug elements. I am not a chemist, but if my difficult child tested positive I would believe the test long before I believed her. His comment that he used a lot before he got caught mean what? Got caught when? Last week or when he first came back into the sober house? If he was caught using after he came back in he really shouldn't be there, they should have kicked him out. I know he was caught and sent to the more restrictive part of the house but that was well over 72 hours ago. My difficult child once tried to tell me her test was positive because she was around a lot of people who used and so it got into her system that way, give me a break.

The thing that sticks out is that he is in denial, even in the face of all these consequences and his living on the street for a week and everything else. It does appear as though he is using this place as a place to sleep and that's it. And now he is looking around for another place that will allow him more freedom to continue doing what he wants without getting caught and he is expecting you to pay for it. Until he admits he has a drug problem he is going to continue to use.

This isn't easy to say because you are going to have to say the same thing to me at some point I am sure. But our difficult children are not even at step one.They have not admitted that they are powerless against drugs. Your difficult child is telling you he does not think he has a problem. My difficult child thinks she can drink/use responsibly.

I know you are terrified of doing anything that will push him onto the street into further drug use. So he is holding you hostage and he knows you won't let that happen. If you stop supporting him financially he will go use and blame you. Is that fair to you? It's just another smoke screen so he doesn't have to take any of the responsibility himself. But what you are doing by continuing to allow him to lie about his drug use and to agree to financially support his living arrangements even though he intends to continue to use, is to push him into further drug use anyway, just delay the out on the street part for awhile until he makes more drug contacts to live with.

He isn't trying to find another place to live that is going to be more restrictive that's for sure. So that means he is looking for a place that he can con. My difficult child did the same when she left the first sober house. By then she had already talked to people in the program who knew all the different sober houses and she picked the one that she thought was less restrictive, and it was.

If this were my difficult child I would tell her that her options were to go into treatment which I would finance (if I could but if I couldn't I would do whatever I could to find her affordable treatment) or go on the street. And then I would tell her I loved her and when she was ready to be serious about getting help she should let me know.

I have been thinking about this for a while now, have you considered asking Dr. Phil for help? Don't laugh, when I see those shows he does with addicts and their families I so wish I could get my difficult child on and have him pay to send her to one of those fancy treatment centers.

I'm sorry about all this TL. It does seem as though both your difficult child and mine are not ready to live the sober lifestyle. I have backed off talking to my difficult child. I can't continue interacting with her knowing that she is using and pulling the wool over everyone's eyes and just in the program for show and either she will get it and realize what she is doing and get back in the program for real, or she will fall hard and lose everything she worked so hard to get. I told her I wasn't sticking around to watch her fall this time.

Hugs,
Nancy

 

[Signorina]

Oh TL - this stinks. I am so so sorry.

Janet said what I thought. And Nancy's answer is far better than any advice I could try to write. I agree 100% that your son is using. He has not earned the benefit of the doubt to overshadow the + drug test and HE ADMITS to using. Plus your discomfort with seeing him - you knew something was up. Follow your head - not your heart. I know it hurts.

I am so so sorry {{{hugs}}}

 

[DDD]

Rats! I want to hope he is being truthful, TL, but my far away gut tells me "not". Sending hugs. DDD

 

[toughlovin]

Thank you gals for all being straight, up front and honest with me. I needed that even though it is not what i wanted to hear. LOL. So I called the manager at the sober house... and yes they feel he definitely used. The spice test definitely came back positive. My difficult child is really kind of dumb because if he kept in touch with me last night I would have been more likely to keep believing him. LOL.... but his non answering me made me feel he was really being squirelly. I checked the phone records and there are lots of phone calls with the girlfriend up here... so I would not be surprised if he is trying to find a sober house up here... not happening.

So the sober house is trying to come up with a plan for him... I think to guide him and maybe he should go somewhere else because he is not getting it there. He told me I can call him and ask him about any of the other sober houses... but he said a lot of the kids migrate to ones that will not hold him accountable... and many of them I am sure do not do the level of drug testing or test for spice. So I suspect that is his plan to go to a less strict sober house so he can get away with more and continue to have a place to live and have us support him.

So i just called him, no answer. So I left him a message that I have been thinking about it and dad and I have talked and that we believe he did use... that he has lied to us so much before. That we will help him go to treatment but we are not going to help him go to a place that is less restrictive and wont hold him accountable.

So he will need to find the treatment place and do the calls and i will check out any place he decides to go with the manager of the sober house.

And he may somehow con the girlfriend into getting him a ticket back here. I am really tempted to call her too... but I tried that before and it backfired on me big time and she herself is a piece of work given that she is still with him in some way.

So getting tougher again... probably until he calls me......

Thank you all for your honesty.... I really needed that.

TL

 

[Signorina]

Oh TL - lean on me and I will lean on you and maybe we can hold each other up. I see so much of my boy in yours and I want to shake them both. {{{hugs}}}

 

[Tiredof33]

I feel your pain as I don't know what's going on with my homeless difficult child. I have nothing to add, the ladies have said it so well. But one thing I can tell you, my difficult child was in a residental program and so many tested positive that the administrators decided there was a problem with the tests and let it slide. They were almost at the end of the 9 month program. Years later difficult child told me that almost all of them WERE using, they were not being monitored as closely since they were so close to leaving.
This program was court ordered (for all of them) and I think any program helps some, but as soon as my difficult child was released he returned to his old habits immediately. He sounded like he had been drinking when he called me to tell me he was out. We can not make them change, it is completelky up to them, and like so many others, my difficult child starts to think he can handle recreational use and he back slides.
It is very scary and they seem to think they are invincible.
One of my saddest memories was a family event at one of the rehab centers. The place was on a lake, gorgous, peaceful setting. The guys had caught the fish and cooked all of the food themselves. Several of the men said they had invited their families but they didn't show up.
It is so very hard to explain to them that you just get tired of the ups and downs, that we are people too and we deserve a life. My life has revolved around how well difficult child is doing for so long I can't remember when it did not!
THEY LIE, and in addition to all of his lies he was very involved with the church program in the rehab center, all of the counselors thought he would 'make it' that time.
Last August after a nasty fight with girlie I told him to stay strong, don't go back to his old ways. He told me then that he would never go back to 'neverland' again. In part that was true, 'cause he was already back there!!!!!!

 

[toughlovin]

Ok so difficult child called me with the names of three places that he said he was given by the IOP and the owner of his current place. I told him I would call my contact there and check them out... then I got some complaints about that guy which i paid no attention to. I called my contact and told him about the 3 places. One of them is the place they send people who are really down and out with no money at all but it is a pretty bad place, the other two places were absolute not otherwise specified. No accountability, they can do whatever they want type places. He checked with the owner and no way would he recommend them!!!!

He gave me the name of 3 reputable places they would recommend. Plus another smaller treatment program. At least one of the places tests for spice.

So I called difficult child back and asked him again where did he get those names from. "people". LOL yeah right, other residents!!! I told him the owner would not recommend them. I then gave him the names of the recommended places plus the tx program if he would consider that. I also told them the program needs to drug test, including spice. He said most of them don't... I said that is one of our requriements since you keep relapsing on spice. He said but I didn't this time... and I said well ok but we know you did at least twice before!! So he said ok... is going to check out those places and call me back.

He is being discharged today... so I know I am compromising a bit.... but at least feel that holding the line for a strict reputable sober house is a good thing. I guess I feel that this is the advice from recovering addicts that know the scene down there... and really if we can keep him getting help before he goes into the serious drug addictions like heroin or meth that is better. Maybe not but I feel ok following the advice of the manager of the sober house.

At least at the moment he is not coming back up here.

TL

 

[Signorina]

TL I read your post and wanted to say woah- you're being way too generous and way too accommodating...

And then I read your last line "... At least he is not coming home...". And I realize that you are doing what's best for YOU (& h and easy child. ) I applaud that.

 

[toughlovin]

Yeah coming home to our house is absolutely not an option... but coming to our home state is a really really bad idea for him and that is what i meant. LOL.

I may be being too accomodating.... but it is a balancing act. Some part of this has to be up to him and if I insist only on tx places then it really will be my decision in a way..... and i really don't want that. So I am compromising between it needing to be a place with structure and rules that is recommended by people in the field or him being out on the street. That is a compromise I can live with.... this time. I think I am going to have to say to him... if you get kicked out of this next sober house then it is the street or treatment.

He is at the library right now looking at the places on line... so not sure what that means if he has already been discharged?

Maybe none of them will take him and he will be back in tx anyways.... don't know.

TL

 

[Nancy]

I think giving him some choices on places that have been recommended is good. You are not falling for his high risk places and you are showing him you are serious about him getting treatment. So let's see how serious he is.

Nancy

 

[buddy]

HUGS TL, you are like the energizer bunny in some ways... you keep going and going.. I love hearing how you set limits etc. though. Those of you here are my heroes.

 

[InsaneCdn]

As far as testing positive... you don't actually know what he tested positive for, right?
My GFGbro had big-time trouble with employment drug tests... and this was 2 years after all of us knew he was totally clean (it showed in a hundred different ways - he was not still using).
Finally a doctor clued in... some drugs, including MJ, are fat-soluable, and can therefore be stored in the body... and then when the body uses that fat, the drug gets back in the system. The doctor walked GFGbro through a targetted weight-loss and weight-rebuild, to flush the "old fat" out of his body, and the drugs with it... it took another year, but after that, he didn't have trouble with employment drug tests.

The point being... if its something like MJ showing up on the test... if he's "lost a bit" lately, it might just be ghosts from the past showing up, Know what I mean??

 

[toughlovin]

Thats an interesting theory. He tested positive for spice... and I did read something that in some cases that can stay in your system... so it is possible it is left over.... BUT I realized in a way it doesn't matter. This is stillt he consequence of him using last time and them giving him a break... this time they just didn't believe him. That is what happens when you lie and relapse twice... they believe he relapsed based on the past...and that is the way the world works.

Plus this is a kid that has no extra fat on his body. He is thin and always has been. He is a pretty healthy weight at the moment 5"11 and about 160 (or maybe less).

So apparently has been discharged. He called and told me none of the places tested for spice since that was one of my requirements was. I told one of the places probably does and to talk to a particular person. Quite a bit later he texted me for the address and phone number as the library is now closed. So I am not sure what he has been doing but he has been discharged and may just be wandering around... maybe sleeping on the beach tonight. I am not sure.

So I am in waiting mode... glad he is not calling me every moment... glad he got that i am serious about them checking for spice.... I like the looks of this one place... looks like it is a whole range of services from inpatient tx to sober house... and a longer term program. Don't know if he will go for it though.

TL

 

[Kathy813]

TL, I saw your post at school but didn't have time to think about my reply. Now that I have read the other posts, I agree with what was said. I don't believe for a New York minute that he didn't use. Addicts lie and steal. It's just a part of the disease.

I totally understand your dilemma about whether to keep supporting him or not. I also understand your fears about what he will turn to if you refuse to support him. At this point, I think telling him that he has to go to a strict halfway house is a good plan. However, he will probably keep getting kicked out if he really doesn't want to change. At some point, and only you know what point that will be, you will have to let go and hope for the best.

In the meantime, we are behind whatever decision you make.

~Kathy

 

[Nancy]

What was he doing if he wasn't calling those places you referred him to? If he didn't want to be wandering around the streets or beaches tonight he could have probably been admitted or at least had an interview at one of those places. I hope he gets moving on checking them out. I wonder how long he's known that he was being kicked out because the houses around here usually give you a short time to find another place before they make you leave.

Nancy

 

[InsaneCdn]

TL - That week on the beach, there's a high chance he was burning into what little body fat he has... just sayin' its possible. No easy answers, especially when you're not certain he is clean.

 

[Nancy]

Honestly TL I really believe he has been using in the sober house. They said the test was definite and he's been there long enough now. Remember they are lying if their lips are moving. But like you say it doesn't matter, he has been kicked out and now has to find someplace else to go. When we went to our parent days at rehab they told us it was not our job to prove they were using, it was their job to prove they weren't. And getting kicked out of a sober house doesn't do that.

Nancy