Son goes to jail. will it help or hurt?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My son was sentenced to 30 days in jail this morning for violating his parole. Basically he’s been sent to jail for marijuana use. As if I hadn’t had a bad enough week. The lawyer asked that he be allowed to report to jail after my surgery(in 2 weeks) and recovery (August 15) but the magistrate said no way, you go today, now, this minute. So if something bad happens to me during surgery, today would be the last time we saw each other (except for the times I’m going to visit before surgery) But nothing horrible is going to happen, so here are the questions:

Is this 30 days enough time for him to get a good start on being clean if he really wants to be?

What kind of withdrawal from regular marijuana use is he likely to endure?

I’ve read that it takes about two weeks of no use for your brain to start thinking normally again. Has anyone out there found this to be the case? (I wish I could find a cite for this, but it was an article I read somewhere about one person’s recovery from addiction)

Will the experience of jail for a fairly law-abiding person make him willing to do anything to never go there again, or is it likely to just embitter him more?

Is the likelihood of inappropriate sexual conduct less in a city jail than in, say, county jail or prison? (I guess I’m basically worried about him being assaulted, and I have no idea until Friday night what this jail is like. He spent a night in our city’s jail when he was arrested two weeks ago, and he said he had a good time…very comfortable, considering, and one of his friends from back in middle-school was there, so he had someone to talk to, and it was safe, and not overcrowded.)

Please, no links to pro-marijuana sites or other silliness…I’ve heard all of the crap from my son, and it all boils down to crap. It’s illegal, and if you’re going to use it, you’d better not whine when you have to pay the penalty. But that being said, I’m a mom of a 19-year-old, and my heart is breaking about him having to do this. Even if it might help. It still hurts.
The only good thing? I no longer have to find a camper for my sister and her family to use when they visit this weekend…we now have a spare bedroom.

2

You have my sympathies.

He made a stupid choice. He has to learn to deal with the consequences of his actions.

Will the 30 days teach him a lesson?

Doubtful. It’ll take a lot longer and tougher sentence for him to get the picture, IMHO.

3

Frankly it depends on your son’s attitude and ethics more than the jail itself.

I suspect he’ll be perfectly safe. Not guaranteed, but more than likely. City vs. county vs. an actual prison really depends on exactly where he’s going.

With chronic drug users, the brain function really doesn’t make major changes for 18 to 30 months. Acute detoxification yes, ability to track complex ideas and be coherent yes, but the neural pathways associated with the substance use are still pretty habituated until much time has passed. Still, the longer off the mood-altering substance, the better.

30 days is a great start towards being clean, if your son wants to be clean. It’s launched many people into lengthy recovery; it’s launched many people into wild debauchery after, all the while saying “see, I proved I can quit any time I want. So I don’t have to stop.”

There is no significant physical withdrawal from marijuana. Mental/emotional symptoms generally consist of anxiety, and emotional reactivity. But again much will depend on your son.

Jail may have a profound effect, for better or worse, or it may be “no big deal” in the words of sooooo many of my patients.

You have my sympathy in this painful time. Please detach from your son with love. He must want to change. He must suffer the consequences of his own behavior, without anyone mitigating the consequences for him. I hope you’ll check out Al-Anon or Nar-anon.

QtM, MD (most recently to prison inmates)

4

Though I only spent 5 days in jail, I can tell you what jail was to me: nothing. It was a time of great boredom and nothingness. Television blared all day and most of the night on channels I didn’t want to watch, the sound echoing off the concrete walls. There were no books to read except battered old King James version Bibles. There was no one I wanted to talk to, and nothing to look forward to but starch-laden meals, for which I was always starving.

Then it was over. In fact, except for the convenience of 24/7 internet, it didn’t differ much from the time I spent on bedrest in my last pregnancy (11 weeks). It is a time of waiting and nothingness, and then it’s over.

I don’t know that 30 days will teach him anything except patience and dullness. Oh, and that employers fire you for that kind of lengthy absence, and you have to start over from scratch.

Now, I’m told that after a year, one’s spirit begins to be broken (I had this from a male friend who had done time).

Anyway, I wish both of you luck. :frowning:

5

kittenblue, I’m not going to comment on the merits of this or any of your other threads. I just want to say how much I sympathize with what you’re going through in your life right now, and to assure you that it will get better. Not tomorrow, or the next day, but it will improve, and when everything is coming up roses again, you will look back on this period and … well, you’ll shudder. But you’ll know you made it through, and it will make your happiness then all the brighter. Best wishes.

6

it’ll probably just teach him to try harder to not get caught. Does he do anything criminal other than take marijuana?

This post reminds me of a guy i go to college with. I think in 10th grade he told his dad he wouldn’t quit taking marijuana, so his dad sent him to military school. He is a freshman studying physics now, but i can tell he is sort of emotionally unstable. Whether military school helped or hurt i can’t say. But if his only crime was non-destructive drug use i would assume he’d just walk out bitter.

7

I worry because the counselor he saw years ago felt he was self-medicating for depression. And that detaching thing…that’s hard. Very easy for people to say, but hard when it’s your screwed-up kid. Who isn’t violent, or mean, or thoughtless, or cruel. He’s just a kid who misses his dad, won’t admit it, and feels that everytime he makes a step forward someone kicks him back. But since dad’s an alcoholic…

I did go to Al-Anon many years ago to deal with my husband’s problems. I can’t remember too well, but for some reason nothing clicked. Nothing anyone shared seemed to have any relationship to my problem, and the literature didn’t help either. I vaguely remember that everyone else seemed to have violence in their lives, and we had none of that. There is a Marijuana Anoymous group that meets at me church, but I know nothing about them.

I also have a problem with kicking him out, which so many people seem to advocate. Maybe because our family has taken in so many kids who were kicked out for one reason or another. I’ve seen what they have to go through, and I don’t think I could in good conscience add another homeless child to the world. Yes, he needs to get another job (he worked very steadily for his girlfriend’s dad’s plumbing company, until they started not paying him and bouncing checks on his account) and the fact of a suspended license doesn’t help. He was making enough that he was thinking of moving out, but now he’s got to start over, and get out of the debt he’s now in as a result of all this.

Thanks, This Year’s Model. And yes, Wesley Clark this is his only criminal tendency that I know of.

8

Why not try it? If nothing changes, nothing changes.

To kick out or not to kick out is a very personal decision. But you can detach with love without kicking him out. And yes, detaching from the situation is not easy. But it doesn’t mean you stop caring. It just means stopping the behaviors which make you unhappy and don’t help him.

9

Sorry, I realize now that this is MA you are referring to, not Mar-anon. My mistake. I expect to go to the MA meeting, one would need to be a marijuana user who wishes to stop.

As for Al-anon: If one group doesn’t do it for you, try a few others. My wife went to quite a few Al-Anon meetings before finding one that “clicked” with her. And I don’t believe violence is a big issue for many in her group.

10

I sympathise with your son, kitten, and good luck for your operation, by the way.

Am I right in inferring that your son has been sent to jail for marijuana use, paroled, and then violated his parole with more marijuana use? It seems a very harsh penalty. Hope he comes out of it all well.

11

What is the extent of his MJ usage? Is it daily? weekly? monthly, once a year? social? habitual?

I agree he should do his time and get off it. But i’m worried that you unilaterally decided that anything pro-mj is crap. Do you find usage intrinsicly wrong?

12

Actually, the original charge was possesion of paraphenalia. There was no actual marijuana. Then he tested positive on all his drug tests and didn’t continue with counseling (it was $35 a session and he wasn’t being paid) AND missed a probation appointment. So there was a warrant out for him (though they knew where he lived they never stopped by) and when his girlfriend got stopped for speeding they ran his ID, found the warrant and then found more paraphenalia…I don’t remember if there was actual weed or just residue. I believe he said the penalty for paraphenalia is higher than for possesion, but I could be wrong…this is not my area of expertise.

Now that you elaborate, QtheM I have sort of detached already over the past two years.

And ** Harmonix**, I don’t know how often he uses. Pretty frequently, I would guess. And yes, I do find usage wrong. I’m not a big fan of mind-altering substances. I prefer to use books for that. Reality is my friend, and I like to be in control. When I drink, I drink for flavor, not buzz. I’m also very law-abiding. I’ve seen too many lives ruined/damaged/retarded by drug use. Knew a brilliant trumpeter who tried to fly off a cliff while high…can’t play after the surgery to rebuild his jaw. But my stock example is our old friends, Ted and Lisa. Young couple with big plans to build their dream house. They bought a nice piece of land, moved a trailer onto it and started to build, and have a family. Hard-working man, lots of friends in construction, good money coming in, big plans. Big tin of marijuana (home-grown!) on the coffee table. Ten years later we visit them and the boys…still in the trailer, which is really starting to look shabby, and no progress on that dream house. Still got that old tin, still offering us a beer and a joint…but the pile of lumber is overgrown with weeds.

13

To be fair, marijuana is probably not the cause of your friends’ apathy, nor necessarily a contributing factor. After all, they could be just as lazy drinking Coke and watching TV all day long. I think a lot of times people use drugs as an excuse for why their loved ones aren’t doing anything worthwhile: it’s not them failing-- it’s the weed that’s causing it!

Though I don’t know them, I suspect that there’s a lot more to the reasons why they haven’t completed the building project than simple pot use. (I know quite a few marijuana users who work hard and are very successful.) Pot is not a drug that seizes control of one’s life through addiction, like alcohol or cack. It can become a lifestyle, but just like any other lifestyle, a choice is being made. A person choses to be lazy or ambitious-- the weed is immaterial.

14

Ok. I’m in Victoria, Australia, and we have no such ‘paraphenalia’ laws. You can buy a bong just down the street from my workplace. Possession and use rarely results in jail time over here, though there are laws on the books, and police are unlikely to even charge you, provided the amounts involved are small. I’m not sure whether it’s a permissive attitude towards marijuana, or the police etc merely prefer to go after the “big fish”.

I hope your son listens to you, but be prepared - he may choose to continue smoking marijuana. Maybe you should come up with a plan that involves working around it, as a backup?

15

Speaking as a former loony dope fiend who wised up, I can tell you this:

*Marijuana use, in and of itself, isn’t habit-forming. If he’s a regular user, the main thing he’ll notice is that his dreaming is more lucid when he’s asleep.

*Physical detox or withdrawal symptoms? Pffft. Being in jail is worse. Not having any drugs is depressing, but jail is more so.

*Cleaning up his act: this is the hard part. He’s got to WANT to. Hackneyed, but true. Jail isn’t necessarily going to convince him of the wrongness of his path; it may simply convince him of the unfairness of the “system,” and how The Man wants to keep him down, and yadda yadda yadda. When it comes to a psychological dependence like marijuana… or alcohol… or, hell, even caffeine… there is ALWAYS another rationalization. Ultimately, you gotta wanna give it up. There are rewards to being clean, sure, but you’ve got to be in a position to appreciate them.

Sure, you get presents on Christmas, but I suspect you or I would not appreciate them as much if we were dragged in at gunpoint and in shackles, if you know what I mean.

This is why you hear so much about “kickin’ the kid out,” or “tough love” as it is so often called. It’s about the only thing you CAN do with a kid who insists on living at home and being a dope fiend, unless you’re prepared to deal with the consequences of letting him do so. Sure, some people wise up spontaneously. I did. But I had to be ready to do so, and I had to do it for my own reasons.

When people told me, “You drink too much,” or “You have a drug problem,” I laughed in their faces. I was quite sure I did not. Only after *I myself * began to wonder whether or not I did have a problem… and became ready to test the situation by going without anything stronger than cigarettes and coffee for a few months… was I in a position to really do anything, as far as giving up drugs goes.

If one gives it up for the law, one will cheerfully light up a joint as soon as there are no cops watching (or so one thinks). If one gives it up for love, one will happily ignite the bong as soon as a fight erupts and Sweetie storms out. You gotta want it for yourself, if it’s going to get anywhere at all.

For what it’s worth, perhaps jail will do him good. Plenty of time to think, if nothing else. I hope it does.

16

First offense? It will certainly hurt and very probably not help. Throwing recreation drug users in jail - commonly hothouses of illegal hard drug use, and abode of professional drug dealers - is just plain stupid.

17

Kitten, I am curious—is 30 days is going to burn off his sentence, or was he given a longer sentence suspended and will be put back on probation upon release? If so, he would in all honesty be better off just doing the whole stretch now and walking away clean. He’s young, and will already be looking for a new job anyway. He’s got no kids to care for, no morgatage payment to make, no home to upkeep. Probation for a MJ user is a trap, and if he’s honest with himself and knows he unlikely to stop smoking, probation will just keep snowballing and snowballing into stupider charges and more bullshit stretches in jail.

However, if he can walk away with no probabtion, he can step back into normal life without cops breathing down his neck and poking through his bodily fluids every time he turns around. What he needs to do is to learn some basic rules about being discreet. No paraphanalia in the car or on your person when you leave your home are HUGE lessons he apparently needs to learn. If I were you, I’d try to help him to focus on that, rather than on some nebulous fantasy that smoking pot is any different on a moral level than sipping a glass of wine (for the taste! :rolleyes:).

18

Her moral code and her opinion about it is obviously not the same as yours, and I suspect that you aren’t going to change her mind about it. She pretty much made that clear in her OP.

And there’s a huge difference between wine and pot in these United States: one will put you in jail, and the other won’t. Maybe that’s not right, maybe that’s not fair, but that’s how it is. So either her son gets used to that fact, and gets used to the idea that his mom isn’t going to approve of pot, or he needs to move to a country where pot is legal.

She doesn’t have to help him focus on being sneakier and craftier about hiding his habit. Because hiding it doesn’t guarantee never ever getting caught again and never going to jail again. Hiding it doesn’t help him pass drug tests. Hiding it doesn’t address the root of the problem (what she suspects is the root of the problem: self-medicating depression).

19

Well, that’s why I said “If I were you”, as in–based on my feelings about the matter.

And of course there’s a difference legally between the two, but I got the feeling that Kitten feels there’s a moral difference which is completely nonsensical IMHO.

Either way, I wish their family well and hope things work out for the best.

20

What Master Wang-Ka said. His reply is excellent. Your son won’t be motivated to stop unless he wants to. No one- not you, the law, counselor, or anyone else can do it for him.

My brother had to lose everything (including his chiildren) and spend time in the State Pen before he got clean. Granted, he was doing MUCH more than smoking pot. And he had priors for lesser charges. The point is, sometimes people have to learn the hard way. Nothing my parents said or did made him change his thinking. No short time in the county jail helped. He went right on back to what he was doing when he got out.

He’s a legal adult, and you can’t control him anymore. But you can control what goes on/ is brought into your home. Make sure that he knows you will not tolerate such behavior or keeping his stash under your roof. Beyond that, I don’t know what else to tell you.

I’m sorry you’re in this situation. I know it sucks for you, especially now.