lonelystar

Im am so grateful I found this site it has opened my eyes and am learning so very much and have been reading countless stories out there and sharing peoples addictions and pain. I came here because I had enough, enough of lies, enough waiting for the phone to ring that my son is dead, enough of bailing him out and most importantly I realized Im not helping him, and so tonight I made a stand .

My drug using son did not want to except help , told me he has no problems and wanted to go "hang out" with his buddies , I told him i will not except that from him anymore I told him if he left he could not come back I have been crying ever since and late tonigh i received a phone call that he wanted me to pick him up to come home, in his defense he sounded sober he said he wanted to come home so I was not worried about him, but again I stood my ground, I told him to come home because he wanted to and if he choose to come he had to get help for whatever is going on with him since he wont admit drug problems to me but he has to others. I told him there were going to be rules to him coming home, he decided to accept them, am i doing the right thing? is this a step in the right direction? , i honestly dont know anymore but it does feel right to me

Chino

Are you prepared to enforce consequences if he breaks rules? That's big around here. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't say it mean

I learned to do what felt right for me, more than my daughter. My motto was/is everything in good conscience, and it forced to me to consult my conscience all the time. But I had to stop ignoring it, first. I knew when I needed to let go, and when I needed to hang in there. It took me awhile before I actually started doing that and I'm still doing it, one day at a time

sojourner

Hello Lonelystar: Welcome to SR. I hope for your sake and for your family's sake (including your AS) that you stick around here and find Alanon and/or Naranon meetings also to go to.

I am also the mom of an active drug/alcohol addict. Our stories are very similar. I too have other children who did not get "caught" in addiction. And I had thought I had gotten them into a good, mature adulthood but then this last one got himself caught up in addiction.

I have learned that addiction is similar to many other "diseases." For instance, in comparing addiction to diabetes - some people can ingest lots of sugar and not get diabetes. But some people (and we ALL agree this is due to genetics and not bad morals), eat lots of sugar and move into diabetes as teenagers. And so with our children.

When it comes to calling addiction a "disease," I find it much more helpful to call it a "neurologic condition." When I educated myself on what drugs/alcohol do to the brain, it just seemed a more accurate phrase that I could wrap my own brain around. And it's also amazing how long those drugs stay in the brain even when long-term abstinence is maintained - up to an entire year! And we now have CT scans of the brain to show that to be true.

As far as allowing your son to come back home while he maintains some boundaries, I can only say that 100% of us have done that. It is part of your journey. You can read others' posts to see how that went for us.

Keep coming back. Even though there is a step 1 (Admitted we were powerless over the addict, that our lives had become unmanageable), I have found that as a mom I still have some kind of influence here. It has just taken me a while to figure out the best way to exert my influence (basically by backing way off from my son and thus getting out of the way of our Higher Power who is at work in his life to save him.)

Hope that helps. If not, "take what you want and leave the rest."

Again, welcome!

lonelystar

Thank you for the replies Ive given them alot of though,

Boundaries......I never was good at setting them , keeping them and then enforcing them I dont know why, I read something here on one of the forums about trauma in families of substance users, and boy did that open my eyes to something I never thought was a part of me, I have alot of issues , loads of them and always did think i was different it seems the trauma of an alcoholic father left me unbalanced and unable to be the real me if that makes any sense but alot of what was written there was me. And so Ive come to realize this is going to be hard so I start little and this is how the conversation went with my son, yes you can come back home but.....
your lifestyle and the way your choosing to live is not something that me and your father will stand for anymore ex the lying, stealing, drug taking, fighting, getting arrested the list goes on.....you can come back home but you will have to think of how you are going to change or even if you want to change , well anyway In the end I told him to think about what i said to him i didnt specifiy a time limit i dont like those i just left it at that. Am i ready to kick him out if and when the time comes, at this time I dont know .......

what I am looking for is the answer to this
I have read alot of stories here, how hard it is to stop using blank, how addiction takes over your life how it is a disease how nobody chooses to be addicted and what a horrible life it is, the life of an addict......you were once not an addict and yet you let yourself become one , in the world that we live in today I am pretty sure at some point in our lives one has experienced and seen the effects of drugs, alcohol and self destructive behavior, we are all well informed and so why go down that road and continue or even start to take that pill, drink, sniff, needle.... Im sorry if ive offended anyone with what ive said Im just a lost mother here..

dollydo

I really don't have any answers for you. All I can say is that you have 3 other children to consider, living with someone in active addiction is very toxic at best.

And, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so with that said, I would suggest that you make no bounderies, as the chance of you enforcing them appears to be, at this time, slim and none.

I wish the best for you and your family.

Kindeyes

lonelystar
When I first began dealing with my son's addiction, I didn't do much of it "right" but I did the best I could at the time.

I'll do my best to answer your question. We as human beings are flawed at best. So many of us have done things that we wish we didn't do but we did it with the thought of XYZ will never happen to me. That is what happens to a person with the disease of addiction. They do what so many people do.....they take the chance to "have fun" with their peers--they never even consider that they might become addicted--they have the "it can't happen to me" thinking. Some...who are not prone to addiction....with suffer a consequence often that isn't that bad but they will realize that they don't want to do it anymore so they stop. The addicted brain doesn't work that way--it continues the denial--the consequences may happen but their addicted brain doesn't recognize it. Often, we (codependents) will think that we can help them by minimizing those consequences. This gives the addict the opportunity to say "hey that consequence wasn't that bad" (because we've taken care of it or minimized the impact). They continue to use. The addiction progresses because it is a progressive disease.

No one ever sets out to become addicted. It is a very debilitating disease--not only for the addict but for everyone who loves them.

I am so sorry that you are dealing with this. Please stick around. Read. Post. Vent. Learn. Educate yourself about addiction and codependency. And stay focused on yourself and keeping yourself healthy. I found help in the rooms of Alanon and Naranon. And post as you learn. You don't have to walk this path alone. We all learn from each other.

gentle hugs
ke

treadingwater

Kindeyes you are so right.
As parents we want to protect our children and make their lives as trouble free as possible, in doing that we have robbed them of learning to be responsible. We are constantly there swooping in at the last minute to save them from their consequences or doing things for them that they could easily do for themselves (which in-turn robs them of learning to be responsible). Hindsight sure is 20/20.
Looking back and after reading "Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children" by Allison Bottke I had to admit what I already knew ...that I was that type of parent. It's not that we were bad parents. We love our children, my husband and I were good parents, so we thought. But now we see how much we enabled our children and unknowingly taught them a sense of entitlement and yes irresponsibility. How could that have happened???
Lonelystar if your son is using or you suspect him of using now is the time to crack the whip. Addicts are very cunning and manipulative...they will lie through their pearly white teeth.
Addiction is definitely progressive. The longer your son can manipulate you and have a roof over his head and food in his stomach the deeper he will progress in his addiction.
Of course your son wants to come home, of course he will tell you what "HE KNOWS" you want to hear. He isn't stupid.....
I wish my husband and I would have heeded the advice of others early on to cut our son off, kick him out of our house but we truly did not understand addiction and so he progressed in his drug use.
In the beginning we could not see ourselves kicking our son out of our house. We were afraid.....where would he go, how would he support himself?
More than once my husband told our son he could not drink or use and live in our house....so our son tried to play on words by saying NOT IN THE HOUSE. That meant he could use outside of the house. We caught him drinking in his car on the driveway. Of course he swore he wasn't drinking in the house. Over time when it finally got so bad he was using bath salts and even shooting up in his bedroom. Finally again we would give him an ultimatium leave or go to rehab.
We did all the things a loving parent does....lots of rehab, theraputic community, more rehab.... 3/4 house....and so we are here today....still in crisis.
We have known for a while we can not fix him! He has to fix himself.
I pray your son is not too far into addiction...
This is such a horrible nightmare...
I cry out to GOD 24/7 begging for a miracle.

lonelystar

thank you all again and so here I am yet again to rant and let it all out...

Death......, this my worst fear for my son, he will die somewhere by his own work or anothers and I wont even be around. This is the obstacle standing in my way Of finding the strenght I need to continue on this path of not enabling him. I know that my son has psychological problems as well as using drugs and it just all comes crushing down on me of what will happen next??? , I feel that every second that ticks by his fate is being written taking him down the dark road called addiction . I took him a while ago to a therapist and she propossed to me that maybe he was using drugs to medicate himself, since when he does take something it is because .......hes stressed, he fought with his gf,I am on his back ....the list goes on, and so what I have managed to do is get him the first available appt with a psychiatrist, which he agrees to he does admit to having all of thiese problems and admits that he does need some kind of help and secondly and I believe this is very important as well to make an asap appt to see his md, My problem is this I have this lurking fear of his death ....If my little brain can get get the fact that I have no control of that part then I can possibly really help him....and here is that part that I get mad at myself for...I read somewhere there is a certain peace in death ................................

Kindeyes

Fear is a huge factor that we deal with. And of course, death is the pinnacle of that fear. It is the worst case scenario.

Accepting that death is a possibility for any of us is important. We have absolutely no control over death--our own or anybody elses. Once I finally stopped worrying about my son's demise and started changing my focus to what is going on TODAY, I started feeling better. Acceptance (for me) was the key to finding serenity. Accepting that I have done everything I possibily could to the best of my ability at the time. Accepting that any of the people I love can be taken from me at any moment allows me to be very grateful for the time I have with them.

Accepting that there is absolutely NO USEFUL PURPOSE in fearing that which we cannot control has helped me move into today and stop awfulizing about tomorrow or regretting what may have happened yesterday.

My son is in God's hands.....as are my non-addicted loved ones......I will rejoice in having them in my life today.

There's a saying.....if you're standing with one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing on today.

I try daily to turn fear into faith (and some days it works better than others).

gentle hugs
ke

treadingwater

Hi Lonelystar you are SO not ALONE. My husband and I are dealing with the same reality. It is so hard to reconcile and so dreaded.
My son is also a self medicator. He was diagnoised very early with ADD. He was on and off different ADD medications. Back then the doctor would have him on his med's during the school week off on the weekends...a real experiment. Now I see what havoc we caused unknowingly. I think our son already had a predeposition to be a user...he has always been a risk taker.
Meanwhile we did put him on medication for the ADD but it seems that only started us on this slippery slope. As he got into his teen years he started to experiment with the regular drugs, pot, drinking, dxm....xanax. He said when he was high he finally felt normal.
It was not until he got his first car at 18 and was pulled over with friends for under age drinking and pot. Surprisingly at the time he was not driving his car, a friend was. So he got caught up in the system and court, probation etc.. that is when we started to see we truly had a problem. Sad to say when our son uses he uses, when he drinks he drinks until he passes out everything in excess.
He had to leave College, and has been in and out of many rehabs....jail for a few months here and there....and in the past two years he has escalated to heroin and pretty much anything he can get high off of ...bath salts, incense from the smoke shops.
He's been in the hospital 3 separate time last year...pancreatitis and oding.
I was shocked to learn he passed out in the Atl airport and woke up in an ambulance, was taken to the hospital, only to be released a few hours later, he gets back on his missed flight like nothing had happened. My heart just aches....how can our kids do this to themselves? I know it's the drugs but I still don't grasp it all.
Our son also needs to be on medication to even out his moods. He seem's to do well when he is on his meds but always goes back to self sabatoge.
It is so sad since most of these kids say that they only felt NORMAL when they started to self medicate. It breaks my heart.
Like you I worry myself sick, I have a constant knot in my stomach that my son is running out of time. I have invisioned all kinds of unthinkable thoughts of what could happen...how we might find out, if we had to id him.
It is a terrible position for us to find ourselves in with our children.

I hate so much the sound of your last comment. I too have heard that from people and it truly scares me. I do not want to experience that pain of relief. This is all so bad.
I just keep praying to GOD that some how my son will call out to the Lord to SAVE him physically and spiritually.

May God's continued Grace and Mercy be with our kids.

Habit

I agree with Kindeyes. I find comfort in knowing that my AD is in God's Hands. My faith has helped me tremendously in this area. I love this quote: "Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. And, lo, no one was there."~author unknown.