I am cautiously optimistic. I don't know how long "scared straight" can last, though. He told me the other day that rock bottom for him was sitting in jail and thinking that when he got out, the kids and I would be gone. I apologized for enabling him for the past two years and told him that I would bond him out only once, and that from now on, if he screwed up, he had to deal with it himself.
Today we were talking about a friend of mine who has never smoked marijuana and was asking those of us who have what it was like, and when I told my husband what I told her, he said "Yeah, one joint and you're hooked." So I think he understands that he does have a problem with marijuana. Before he said things like "Well, I've been smoking pot since I was a little kid, and it's just part of who I am, and I'll never change." I think he was eight when he first tried it. Makes me so mad that someone would do that to a child. One of his pothead friends is no longer allowed at our home (well, none of them are now, but this one was booted out a long time ago), because he once said that when my daughter is a teenager he was going to get high with her. At the time she was an infant. So sad that so many people think drugs are a rite of passage. I had friends in high school whose parents threw "pot parties" for them and their friends as a "safe" way to get high. I wonder how many of them are addicts now, to pot or anything else. My husband's parents do not approve of illegal drugs, but he is an ACOA, and his family is in denial about their other kids' drug and alcohol problems in addition to his alcoholic parent's drinking problem (the parent has since quit drinking but said it was due to health problems not related to alcohol).
My husband has a number of physical and mental health problems that he is not dealing with, so I believe he is self-medicating with marijuana, but he is still in denial about THOSE problems. I really need to see a psychiatrist myself (for depression, anxiety, and insomnia--basically the things I used to self-medicate for and have had trouble dealing with since I got sober), so I am going to tell him that I'm going, and if he wants to go with me and make his own appointment, he can. I can't do it this week because I spent a large chunk of my paycheck on his bond, but next week I can.
I don't know how to be supportive of his desire to change (if indeed it is a genuine desire, which I think it is) without enabling him any further.