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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nomad" data-source="post: 765380" data-attributes="member: 4152">Welcome, Mercury! So much of what you wrote resonates with me and our situation and so many others that I have read on this board. And the pain us parents feel is tremendous. I'm fairly sure not everyone can relate to the deep hurt these situations cause us. It is profound.Do you happen to know if your son's bio father has a mental illness? It's just a curiosity, because perhaps medications of a certain type could help your son. But, I recognize that he is not very likely to be compliant.I see that you already understand that enabling just doesn't work. And, I know for myself, it's a weird and complicated process...because at times, nothing seems to work. What Copa said about our children then feeling like we don't love them when we finally say "enough" of the enabling really resonated with me. And it seems your son blames YOU for everything ....it all seems to meld together...as I've experienced this too and seen it before.They struggle (to put it mildly) understanding that their life and how it comes together, depends on THEM. Sometimes, parents will give an "assist" especially if an adult child falls on hard times through no fault of their own.But, refusing medication, therapy, taking illegal drugs, quitting jobs, getting evicted...well...this is his fault, period.You must let go of the guilt. Your son seems to be making zero effort. And no matter how severe his mental illness is, he should be able to do better than this. After MUCH chaos we let our daughter go for a long time and other than her cell phone, we did not help her at all and in her case was near homeless several times. Perhaps being female, this scared her. She was able to get money from friends for hotels during this period of time. We stayed out of it. It was hard.After this experience , time  and much disengaging on our part.... If our daughter meets us half way and is respectful, we help her here and there with certain things, particularly therapy and ubers to the doctors office. We added these things when she did "better."  We also continue to pay for her cell phone, and it's one thing we probably will continue with for safety reasons.  Our help is limited and in a certain way, I'm pleased we got to this point. I hope she appreciates it. I'm not certain. In our case, even though we are helping a little bit more, she is not back in our lives.These days, she hesitates to be disrespectful to us or to blame us. This is something. And I believe she learned this after coming insanely close to being homeless. If it weren't for some kind friends...she absolutely would of been.So, even though I thought it was impossible for her to learn even under dire circumstances because her cause and effect reasoning is soooo limited, I do think she learned a little with (in her case) being near homeless. It isn't NEARLY what a "healthy" person would learn, but it is a little something. So, perhaps there was a tad of learning that took place when she found herself in dire straits. I believe after being near homeless (again, being female I think might be scarier, just a guess) she now has a tiny understanding of her need to try to help herself and that blaming us doesn't "fly." Tiny is better than ZERO. I highly recommend the "Anonymous" programs that are available for families. I know AA has them and perhaps NA does as well. We went to Families Anonymous for a short time and got a lot out of it. I understand they have on-line classes too.I personally also believe my spiritual beliefs  are of some help and I, on occasion, she a counselor when things are simply over the top. Be strong...you are not alone.</blockquote>

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