I’m with the people who say something has to be done now. Your son needs to realize he is out of the house NOW. If you wait until right before you move I fear he might snap or something when he suddenly realizes what is going to happen. If you were to throw him out today would he be able to get back in the house? Will someone always be home? You could ask your neighbors to watch the house and call the police if he tries to come bank while you’re not there.
What in the heck is all this talk about Rebecca & her younger son ‘getting out’?
The older, drug-addicted, non-working, ranting-n-raving son is the problem – get him out!
And that should be easy. [ol]
[li]The next time he takes meth, call the cops.[/li][li]They will come, find him under the influence, find his drugs, and haul him off to jail. [/li][li]Appear at his trial, but do NOT do the first-time-arrested, good-kid-under-bad-influence, etc. spiel – instead, say “Judge, my poor son really needs help – please lock him up for the 6 months or a year that he will need to get effective treatment”.[/li][li]Then visit him regularly, assure him of your love & concern, and give him encouragement. Ignore any ranting & abuse he spouts at you, just watch as he gets better. [/li][li]And watch your younger son get better, and you feel better yourself.[/li][/ol]
This is a far better outcome than waiting around, hoping he won’t do something violent, then either running away and leaving him to end up in the street, or taking him with based on promises that he will promptly break.
Do it – now! You will all be better off.
Frankly, I must concur with t-bonham & others who gave similar input.
Contact the show Intervention…sometimes it helps people realize their families will truly not support them if they dont get their acts together.
I would suspect that said show might not want to touch this one with a 10 foot pole. People in active psychosis due to drug use don’t tend to be too reachable by standard intervention techniques.
The safety of the OP and her minor child must come first.
I’m going to have to chime in and agree with t-bonham. You are putting yourself and your younger son through another 10 weeks of hell.
Why are you waiting? Get the older son out.
Yes, it’s hard. But you’re his mother. You have a responsibility to yourself, your other son, and the rest of society to make sure your older son is not a danger to himself or others. Letting the situation continue until May, hoping nothing blow up before then, is not the best plan.
You know what you have to do. Do it.
I can’t speak for the others, but I’m coming from a perspective of there’s what’s right, then there’s what you might have to do to get the end result you want and need. Yes, absolutely, it should be the older son who is kicked out/put in rehab/arrested/whatever. If Rebecca needs to move stealthily in the middle of the night and not tell her older son where she’s going to keep her and her younger son safe, then that is what she needs to do. This is similar to an abused man or woman leaving a relationship - the abused one shouldn’t have to be the one who uproots themselves and turns their lives upside down, but they almost always are.
I agree that it would be great to be able to kick older son out, but I don’t have a lot of faith in that being possible. He would probably break back in, hurt one or both of them, or steal their stuff.
Not if he’s locked up! In jail, or in a locked treatment facility. He’d be much better off in either of them (and they’d be better off if he was there, too).
Rebecca–I feel horrible for you. I can only imagine what you’re going through.
It seems to me that t-bonham has it spot-on, for all the reasons others in this thread have already mentioned.
IANAL/police officer, but I have serious doubts that the cops would be able to hold someone for long on charges of being on meth, or even having meth. I suspect that they would release him pending trial, and he would come out very pissed-off. Rebecca may bring up fears of violence but there’s no physical evidence.
It’s harder than you might think to get somebody locked up for any length of time without major criminal charges.
I don’t think the legal system can hold him, but a psych hospital might be able to. No, there is no physical violence yet - and the entire point is that we don’t want any. He hasn’t done anything so far to jepordize his meal ticket and lodging, but when it finally sinks in that he is about to lose those things there is really no telling what he will do.
NO, they can’t hold him. A friend of mine has a son who is clearly a danger to himself and others when he’s not on his meds. He got into an altercation with a cop during an episode (could have killed him) and he was right back on the street. A psych ward is a revolving door that spins pretty fast. Basically they can scoop him up and force medications down his throat and the nano-second he is lucid he is a free man.
The only way Rebecca’s son gets any help is voluntary incarceration or a jail sentence that is long enough to make that happen. Anyone want to venture what it takes to get that kind of jail time?
You’re doing good. Honestly, you are. Maybe this doesn’t seem like the time to be throwing out platitudes, but in a situation as stressful as this it’s easy to second guess ones self or wonder if you’re doing the right thing. It sounds to me like you’re doing your best and I wouldn’t want you to forget that.
Personally, I’d suggest talking with his counselor to establish a plan for intervention and long term rehabilitation, possibly with an inpatient therapy program. His counselor (and yours - I assume that you were footing the bills) should know the psychiatric and legal lay of the land for where you live. Let them know that you are ready to make whatever changes are needed to make your son whole and get a plan going. Speaking from personal experience, it probably won’t be cheap and I don’t know how much legal control you can have over a nineteen year old, but it’s worth getting started.
Then there’s the fact that he’s a full adult at 19 years old. He is making the bed that everyone is lying in; nobody can make him do anything (except the cops, if he goes too far, but then it’s probably too late and somebody is hurt); if he would rather have drugs than a family, there isn’t much Rebecca can do with that choice.
Back after the weekend, folks, and many heartfelt discussions regarding this situation with my SO. NO, older son does not have my “new” address, and won’t be given it, but he may try to find me anyway–my best bet there is that his car will more than likely NOT make the trip to the other town, it isn’t in tremendously great shape, and even tho he’d like me to put a bunch of money into it for him, I have declined to do so. Also I am sure, short of robbery, that he cannot come up with gas or expense money for such a trip, at least not for a while.
I cannot tell you exactly how he gets his meth-crack-crank-speed, but he HAS pawned a bunch of household items for it, altho nothing of significance that belongs directly to me. Every gaming system I bought him, all the games and all DVD movies have been pawned. I sleep with my purse under my pillow now, but he has not tried to steal from it recently. He does not keep the drug around the house. He goes to a friend’s house to take it, then comes home and goes into his terrorist behaviors I called the police on him once. They found nothing at the house, and (here’s small-town cops for ya, and I’m not even kidding), told me, “Well, Ma’am, boys WILL be boys!” I am not expecting any help from that quarter, and I am not being cynical about that, it’s just how it is.
The advice to leave NOW is well taken and that is what SO wishes as well. I have called my younger son’s school today to speak about the repercussions of taking him out of school immediately, and I’m awaiting a call back. Remember, too, that younger son is frightened and torn about all this, and might very well tell his brother what is going on. He’s horrified to see the family unit disintegrating this way, while at the same time hating his brother’s behavior. That is an extremely delicate situation for me to handle in the right way.
Thanks for all your avenues of advice, I plan to contact some other local groups to see what their advice is (a local teen help center, a couple of the rehab clinics, etc.) Older son HAS spent a weekend in the local psyche center, and it is exactly as some have said…he is released in 2-3 days, nothing further is done. I’m not sure what legal avenues I can pursue, as he hasn’t YET done anything irreversable from a legal standpoint.
This is the hardest thing I have tried to work thru in my life. Thanks for your help and support. I certainly feel less alone than I did.
–Beck
You’ve mentioned that your younger son doesn’t want to see anyone for counselling, but I think he really should. You have your adult perspective to help you cope with what your older son is doing; your younger son is probably just lost and scared - why his brother is acting this way, what he did to cause his family these problems, how to deal with it, how to deal with loving and hating his brother at the same time, etc. Maybe if he won’t see anyone, you could find a book or two for him to read on the subject and just casually give them to him.
You know, I hate the idea of you running scared from your son, but I also hate the idea of you and your family continuing to be terrorized by him. This truly is a tough call - don’t be shy about using all the resources you can find to help you through this.
When you do move to the new place, if your older son does show up (and he probably will), I think that is the time for a whole new set of rules. Have you discussed that with any counsellors - how to have an extremely limited relationship with your older son, on your terms only? Or no relationship at all, if that’s what’s best for you.
May I ask if your older son’s father is in a position to thump some sense into his skull?
Excellent question, and horrible answer, I am afraid. Dad lives in OR, has never worked a day in 10 years, and very spottily prior to that, and is a primary caregiver to his elderly mother right now, which I am sure means he is robbing her blind. He and his girlfriend, who had no other children, live in Mom’s house and take care of her, at her expense. It is DAD who got older son addicted to tobacco, unbeknownst to me, and since Dad has also spent time in jail for methamphetamine manufacture in recent years, I might just as well suspect him of being the “first” to give the drug to my son.
For some reason, I felt that as a divorced parent, I was doing my son a service by sending him out every summer to spend time with his father & his family, whom I DO adore. Additionally, I have been careful not to bad-mouth dear old Dad to my son. I was also careful not to allow older son to stay directly with Dad during the visits, but instead with his more responsible aunts, 3 of them, who took turns accomodating him. But Dad still got to see plenty of him, and it became apparent a few years ago (about 4) that older son was admiring Dad’s diseased lifestyle just a bit too much. Visits discontinued, but the damage was done.
Now they communicate by phone, bad-mouth me in the extreme together, and older son comes away feeling very much “righteous”. But Dad in all actuality wants nothing to do with having son live with him now, he himself isn’t well enough to handle the responsibility, and he has the care of gramma, who is really an invalid. He doesn’t tell ME this of course, but his sisters, with whom I still communicate. They all have families and problems of their own, and are unwilling to take older son in, either. But why should they?
No help from that arena, sorry to say.
I am very much alone in this.