I've been lingering on this board for months but felt compelled to weigh in on this one. My beautiful, intelligent 30 yr old stepson is an addict (stimulants: crack and meth). He first began to get clean back before Christmas in a treatment center and I got way, way too involved in his recovery without realizing what I was doing and then realized I had become codependant. Fortunately for me, I found this board and Al-Anon and learned to Let Go and Let God when he relapsed after four months. He is now clean again and in another (Salvation Army) center and absolutely loves it. He's been clean for more than six weeks. In between centers, when he was using off and on after living with me for two months and then I had to kick him out for using and stealing, I actually had to let him choose a homeless shelter over home in early July. He had been living with a dealer and they got into an argument of some kind so he had no place to live. I told him he could stay with me for the night if he agreed to go into treatment in the morning. He then picked-up the phone and started calling homeless shelters so I knew that was my answer: he wasn't ready. It was really hard not to just give in and let him stay with me becuase I love him dearly. But I stuck to my barrier and actually dropped him off at the shelter, where street people were sleeping on the sidewalk outside the shelter. The next morning he took a bus back to my place and asked if he could use the phone to try to get into a treatment center, which he did the next day and has been in ever since. I realized that I had done the right thing by letting him go to the shelter and hit some kind of bottom becuase he was very determined to get into treatment the next day. So, for now, my step-son is doing better than I would have hoped and we're in pretty much daily contact by phone, txt and visits. It's wonderful to have him clean and balanced again. I think of all you bio-Moms out there and can't imagine wath this kind of hell must be like for you. I admire you all so much for doing the best you can for yourselves and your families. You all give me a great deal of inspiration and hope which is so helpful to me in dealing with my relationship with his alcoholic father who doesn't and won't admit he has a problem (I'm the one with all the problems in his mind) but who is, I hope and pray, moving out at the end of the month. Anyways, great thread. There's always hope and in the meantime, we need to focus on our own lives, happiness, health and relationships with our Higher Power.