Weary Mom 18, Welcome to the forum. We are glad you found us. We do understand. We really do.
First, your story about your daughter sounds a lot like my son's story.
He had troubles in school---nothing major really---wouldn't do his work, or if he did it, didn't turn it in, etc. That started in middle school. He also got in trouble for "holding" a girl's Ipod for her, and was actually paddled. At the time I thought that was a great injustice. Now, when I think back, I see it all differently. In high school he wanted to play soccer so he kept it between the lines, so to speak, just enough. He was deemed gifted, but "hated being smart" so he basically sat in place and did nothing. Finally I gave up that fight, and let him be in the "regular" classes. His high school was the "sports high school" in our city, so he passed everything with very little effort.
Of course, the plan was for him to go to college. That was always my plan for both of my boys, and it was talked about in our home consistently. They both had chores, and responsibilities, and part-time jobs, curfews, went to church every Sunday, went on church mission trips, were acolytes. We were going to have a great family! Or die trying.
When my son (difficult child) was a junior in high school, my husband and I separated. My ex-husband is an alcoholic, not drinking now. But years and years of living with that took a toll on me, even though he was a very high functioning alcoholic, had a professional executive position, etc. He was an infrequent binge drinker, so I had no idea he was progressing in his disease, as it happens. Finally, the "chickens came home to roost" as they say, and he ended up in the ER one Easter Sunday morning with a blood alcohol level of four times legally drunk. I had realized about a year before that that he had a serious problem with alcohol---after a while people can't hide their addictions as he had for so many years. Addiction is a progressive disease. It gets worse and worse if untreated. There is a saying that untreated alcoholics and addicts end up in one of three places: jail, an institution or dead.
His disease and my focus on enabling him and then, after it all came to light, my obsession with stopping his drinking, drove us all crazy. He was nuts and I was nuts. I started going to Al-Anon at that time and went for that period for 18 months. It saved my life, even though there were many of the tools and practices I didn't embrace. I thought I was different and he was different and quite frankly, I just wanted someone to tell me how to make him stop. I heard the teachings, but I was a "part-time" believer in them.
So we divorced---it was a bitter divorce---my younger son (difficult child) flunked out of the four year university after the first year (he actually flunked out the first semester but they allowed him to finish the second semester). then he enrolled in community college---again, my kids were going to have college degrees, by Goodness!. Nothing would do except that.
He either dropped, withdrew or flunked those classes. Slowly, slowly, we started changing our own behavior, instead of giving him another and another and another chance. We kept buying his "story" for years before we started stopping. And then even when we started stopping, we were very inconsistent in our stopping.
During this time, he was living here and moving out and coming back. I had him sign contracts. We had talks. We had screaming and yelling matches. I had lists of rules posted on the refrigerator. I was a nervous wreck. He made promises. He defied everything I said. It was a back and forth up and down roller coaster, and nothing really changed. He just kept getting worse.
I drug him to doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists. By Gosh I was going to get to the bottom of this. Surely something was really wrong with him, something fundamental. I knew he acted depressed and is an introvert and didn't communicate well. He was defiant. He did the opposite thing of what made sense, all the time.
One Christmas we went to my family's two states away. His girlfriend went with us. My older son went too. There were four people in the car driving. When my younger son drove---took his turn driving---he went very fast and reckless. I asked him to stop over and over again, until finally I was screaming. He kept on. Needless to say, he didn't drive again.
While there, he and his girlfriend stayed at my sister's house. I was at my parents' house. The second night we were there, they got totally drunk, wanted my niece to go buy them even more beer, went through the medicine cabinets and got my brother-in-law's pain medications from his open heart surgery, and were completely out of control. The girlfriend was a distant second fiddle to it all (today she is doing great, has well moved on with her life after my son). My son was the ringleader. Of course I still thought it had to be the girlfriend, mainly. Not my son.
We left early to come home after I found out all that happened. We left immediately. I called my ex-husband and had a long talk. I told him something was very seriously wrong. It was way more than an immature boy acting out. We have to do something drastic here. We have to get him help. He was 20 at the time. That was the first time I realized something big and bad was going on and it was going to be a long, long time until things got better.
For the last five years, until last June, it has been a fast decline. My son has been in jail some 8 or 9 times. He has multiple misdemeanors and two felonies for selling drugs. He has been homeless multiple times, some of those periods for several months at a time. He has not lived in my home for even one night since we got back from that Christmas trip and a week later I asked him to sign a contract with more new rules and stipulations. He tore it up in my face and walked out the door.
I have read every book and article I can find about mental illness. I have been convinced at times that he surely must have all kinds of diagnosis. I have talked with many mental health professionals. See, I thought if I could just understand it, I could do something about it.
The past five years have been a mixture of the worst time in my life and the best time in my life. I have been filled with grief and despair and hopelessness and fear many, many times. Early on, I could not function very well. I have my own business and I sometimes I couldn't work at all. But I had to support myself, since I was divorced and on my own, so I would drag myself back and somehow keep going. But not very well.
My son continued, despite my best efforts. Early on, I hired lawyers, forced him into rehab---a $6K tab that I put on a credit card, forced him into counseling, visited in jail, put money on his jail account, mailed books and cards and letters to the jail. No matter what he did, I kept on trying to maintain contact and to get him to change. I did and said everything under the shining sun. No stone was left unturned.
As I began to see that my best efforts were producing nothing, and in fact, he was only getting worse and worse, I began to turn my efforts on figuring out how I was going to live if this continued. I began to see that I had to go on with my own life.
It took a long time, and many fits and starts, for me to change. As I would change a little bit, I would start to feel better, and function better, and that would encourage me to continue to work on myself. There were some periods that I went to an Al-Anon meeting every single day. For weeks and weeks. I would talk to my Al-Anon sponsor every day or every other day. I would write in a journal, read Al-Anon and other recovery books and articles and literature. I continued to exercise, and work, and talk to friends, and go to church. I developed new daily habits that were positive for me. I worked it. I worked it hard.
All the while, there was drama and chaos and bad things happening with him. As I got better, he continued to get worse. He would get out of jail at midnight (that is when they let them out here---barbaric) and walk to my house, getting here about 2 a.m. and pound on the door. This happened over and over again. The last time, I talked to him through the door and said to meet me at the garage. I said get in the car. I said I am taking you to an allnight restaurant and I will pay for a breakfast for you, and that is it. Never come to my house again in the middle of the night for any reason. If you do, I will call the police immediately. I will take out a restraining order against you. He said, I'm not going to a restaurant, take me to an all night laundromat, so I did. His parting words to me were: F___ you. I went home, went back to bed and went to sleep.
I could go on and on and on.
The point is, I, and many on this board, have been where you are. Going through something like this, with a beloved child, is soul-shattering. It calls into question everything you ever knew, or believed or wanted or hoped for.
I call addiction the 40-foot-tall monster that mows down everything and everybody in its path. It is unflinching. It is invincible.
UNTIL. Until the person who is in its grip wants to change. On that day---and that is a wonderful day---when the person truly hits bottom---that is when there is a chance---just a chance, mind you---for something new to happen.
The thing is this: We have to get out of the way. We have to get out of the path where our adult children are, and where they are walking. It is their journey not ours. We are not on their path, and we can't change their path. It is what it is. They will do what they will do. Until they don't.
And I truly believe that them stopping has very little to do with us. We are bit players in this drama. We are on the sidelines and that is where we need to go, and where we need to stay.
All of our "help" only prolongs their day of reckoning. Will they die in the meantime? Will they go to prison? Will they go crazy? Will they be badly hurt, maybe for life?
Well, that may happen. I have wrestled with all of this in the middle of the night, many many times. When we love someone so much, like we do our children, we cannot fathom "allowing" this. We will do anything. We will spend anything. We will risk everything.
I so understand that. I did that. Until I stopped. And my stopping wasn't pretty. It happened over a long long period of time, over months and years.
Today, my son is working full time. He is paying his own bills. This has been going on since late October 2014. Is he cured? Is he fixed? Will he start using drugs again? Is he using them now? Is he drinking? What are his thought processes?
I don't know the answers to any of these questions. I only know what I see. I talk with him or text him weekly. He lives in the same town I do. The last time I saw him was three weeks ago when he ran by here on his way to work.
He is 25 years old. He is a grown man. He is going to have to be responsible for his own life, whatever that means. I love him very much.
The key to this is you changing. It's hard and it's lonely and it's isolating, but it is worth it. I am a much better person today than I was five years ago. Through this, I have been able to improve myself greatly, and today, I have much compassion for him and for all of us and our adult children who we learn about on this board. Change is very hard, for us and for addicts and alcoholics. It is filled with relapse, for us and for them. We have to accept reality. Life isn't perfect. People aren't perfect, and this life isn't a pretty story where everything comes out all right. I wish it was, but it isn't.
Warm hugs. Keep posting. We are here for you.
