Almost 2 years later....it's almost too tiring to continue the story, but for anyone wondering what happened:
A son faced the court, went to jail for 30 days, out Oct 23, 2006 (his birthday), released to me and given 2 years probation. Court ordered AA meetings, daily testing, weekend community work. No license, no job, no $$....I was it for 5 mo. until he finally got back to work (elec. cable splicer, good money). His brother and sister provided transportation to work, he paid me $75 wk. (whoopie), had his boys here every other weekend.
Red flags started popping up once he had money in his pocket working in areas where drugs were available, started with "migraines", going to a doctor for Tramadol and other "substitute" drug (keep in mind this is all hindsight now), borrowing money from brother and girlfriend, no money for xmas gifts for his boys, and finally decides, after one year of VERY expensive probation, that he's going to finish 60 days in jail instead of another year of probation.
Two days before court date, he starts what I recognize as detoxing...calls 911 himself at 2:30 am, they didn't admit him, he stayed up all the next night throwing up....finally got himself admitted the next day and when I went in his backpack to get phone numbers, I found needle, spoon, white substance, used spoon and lighter.
I confronted him, threw it all in the garbage, took him to court, he went to jail and I let him know he wouldn't be coming back here to live but he could find a halfway house to "start over" again. He gets out next week and it's been painful thinking that he could end up on the street because I don't think he's got what it takes (or wants to be clean bad enough) to do it on his own.
Enter his father....my ex.....a long time functioning alcoholic. Says he's not going to let him go to halfway house, son can live with him, stepmother, brother and sister and they will control his money, take him to meetings, not let him out of their site......let me tell you, they don't have a clue as to what is going on. They even said they will take him to meetings in their town so he won't be around "riff-raff" in my town where "he probably got the drugs". They don't even realize that he and I both went to meetings in their town!
You know, I 've offered to give them a run down on what to watch for with him living there, but I can't give them a lesson on how it all works. They have to want to understand it and do their homework like I did. I don't want to have to say I told you so in 6 mo. or a year, but I can see where it's going. The only thing I can hope for is that maybe going through this twice will make him want it more this time (sobriety). If nothing else, living with his step mother should do it!
skillet
What a waste the past 18 mo. has been. Keep us in your prayers. I love him so much, but I've learned to detach. Still, I was enabling during the time he was here. Thanks for being here. I introduced this forum to a woman he was dating and ended up using and hurting.