Hi, I’m new to the website and new to Nar-Anon in general. There are no in-person groups in the entire state of Idaho, so I’m glad to have this opportunity to join the online community. The last four years have been a struggle with my now 16 year-old son. My ex and I thought he was just coming into his own and pushing boundaries like teenagers do, but more recently discovered my son had been doing drugs since middle school. It started out as marijuana, but has escalated over the last six months to include dabbing THC, meth, oxy, DXM, mushrooms, DMT, Xanax, and acid. I feel terrible that we didn’t realize the mood swings and outbursts were effects of the all the drugs he was on. As soon as we discovered the severity of the situation, we began the process of looking for inpatient programs, knowing that my son’s staying in the same environment with us, his school and friends would not be a good thing. We had him accepted to an out-of-state program (none in Idaho for youth), but our insurance put the stop to that. We ended up getting into an out-patient program with family involvement locally. In the month that we’ve been attending outpatient, my son has punched holes in my walls, broken a TV, shattered his phone, and trashed my outdoor firepit. His dad’s house also has holes, broken rakes and smashed mailboxes. My son has verbally berated both of us repeatedly. In the month we’ve been in outpatient rehab, my son now has misdemeanor runaway charges, felony destruction of property charges, and felony drug charges all pending at the Juvenile Prosecutor’s office. It’s been a month and we’ve heard nothing from them. My son is now in an inpatient psychiatric hospital as of last weekend for talk of suicide and ongoing substance use. He thinks my ex and I should just leave him alone to do his thing. That means letting him live in our homes, feed him, clothe him, let him go where he wants when he wants, and drive him places and allow him to do drugs and fail out of school. My son’s thought processes are so messed up and unreasonable. He is truly the most frustrating person to communicate with. Frankly he’s impossible to communicate with. I think what makes it even worse for me is that I feel like my ex has attributed to a lot of the problems with my son. He has never been able to hold our kids to any kind of consequence because he feels guilty and caves. He won’t have our kids do anything around the house as far as general chores because he doesn’t trust them to do things “right.” In essence, I feel he has prevented our kids from developing decision-making skills, accountability and responsibility. I am the “bad parent” because I expect our kids to clean their rooms/bathroom, do their laundry, unload the dishwasher, etc as part of being a member of the family. I don’t allow video games because they were all-consuming, and I expect my kids to get themselves out of bed on their own for school. Obviously, I am no perfect parent and I know there are things I can do better. I look forward to hearing your stories and learning ways of bettering myself, dealing with my son’s addiction and other behaviors, and hopefully saving my son’s life and our family.
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