First, I want to say this to Darkwing. This first post of yours is quite possibly the most brilliant and the most personally useful to me, that I have read on this site in the 14 months I have been here.
It is very dangerous territory, for a new to recovery addict to be in an altered state of mind. It leads to lowered inhibitions, and can never have any effect other than negative.
This is stellar, a perfectly clear concise statement helpful to anybody dealing with a destructive behavior.
It sounds like your mental and emotional state depend ENTIRELY on your son's going ons.
Well, the thing is, for many of us here, this becomes the case, myself included. In one way of thinking, awareness of this state of mind in us, becomes very powerful and hopeful--because everything in us is concentrated on this fulcrum, when we pivot (detach) with this we are able to find new direction, control and meaning in ourselves.
Does you freaking out somehow improve the situation for him?
Well, this is really it, is it not. Enmeshment. The assumption that if I suffer with him, for him, that I have control. And my having the illusion of control trumps everything. It has become about me. Only me. And my regaining control in myself. We may think it is about our child, but we are playing out a highly ritualistic scenario in our own heads--and using the other person as a prop.
Just as your son needs to get to the point where his mental and emotional well being doesn't rely on mind altering substances, you need to get to the point where YOUR mental and emotional well being doesn't rely on his.
Like this.
I suggest removing whatever ability you have to monitor his e-mails, texts, stuff like that. It's a bit invasive, and is causing you way more trouble than it is really worth. It is making you sick with worry over something you aren't even entirely sure happened yet.
So, it seems that Darkwing, very politely (but directly) is suggesting that I may have had an addiction to controlling my son--all the time experiencing such
as in him, not me. Where I had no control at all.
So that as long as I perpetuated this, both of us would suffer--without out--and we did.
My son began to change when: One, I made no contact at all. Two, when I became indifferent to every single thing he did,
EXCEPT to my boundaries. His boundaries became completely his to decide and to control, because I had gotten out of it entirely.
And guess what? He did. He began to see himself as the fulcrum of his own power, and I just a satellite.
The evidence of this is stunning. But the one thing that amazes and gratifies me most, is how much less he is lying.
You see, as long as I was the one taking responsibility, he must have seen both his personal power and personal responsibility (as well as his conscience) within me.
Now, I am going to let myself off the hook here, because I think that parents and their adolescents generally go through a cycle like this where the moral authority is seen by the teen as in the parent--and the task of the teen is to circumvent a and conceal.
But with us it went on until my son was 26. I felt myself justified because
he was not doing it.
I see now it may have been in part because
I kept holding onto power over and in his life.
Constantly terrified I was going to disappoint my aunt once again
Well Psychwing (that was a Freudian Slip. Truly. I mean Darkwing, this is exactly the thing that my son has said.
He lies, he has told me because he feels like a fuxk up and wants to avoid feeling perpetually so, or that I should feel it about him. He just cannot go there, to one more error or mistake. He does not want to face it or to have me see it or feel it.
So what was really going on inside him, was the very opposite of what I thought.
I ascribed intention to hurt or to damage me. I thought he felt disrespect, that I did not matter. And it was exactly the opposite thing.
He has told me recently that it hurts him to feel he did not love me. That who he did not love was himself. (Darkwing will remember that--because he was the one who told me first.)
It made my entire recovery about her, and not me.
I do not see this as wrong. You did it the way you could.
It is like a young adult version of the toddler who carries around a stuffed animal or a blankie to remember that there is a Mama.
When you could make your recovery about you, you did.
I am still working on being better for myself. I struggle with it, because I don't like myself very much.
I am waiting for my first social security check and I am struggling with the same thing, Darkwing.
It is so much easier to be happy together when both parties are capable of being happy apart.
Yes. Profound and true.
My mom died before I was capable of making an adult decision. I couldn't vote. I couldn't join the military. And the effect of that still shows to this day. I am a man child in a lot of ways. Behind every friend I have emotionally. I have had to learn EVERYTHING through trial and error.
You know, Darkwing, I cried this morning. I cannot remember if it was after or before I read this post.
I cried because I was the same way. I led the same life as you, because I never felt support. Just sabotage. I raised myself. And many many times I was betrayed. And now I am wondering if the sense of betrayal was always in me. Did I, one, carry the expectation of betrayal, or two, never really attach that much (so that I might have been the betrayer)?
And then our kids come along and we wake up and there is nothing held back--and then they suffer and fall down. And we are destroyed by it--and feel that all of the ugliness in our lives and our selves--is responsible. And we obsessively and compulsively, or hysterically (my case) or angrily, try to clean it up--clean ourselves up--and nothing works. Until we come here.
And we stop. And we let our kids grow up.
.
So, that temptation remains with no real way to make it so I CAN NOT look. I will have to do this myself, I guess. And, control the urge. You are right. It IS invasive. 
