My Drug Addicted Son Is Spiraling Out of Control. I Am Afraid for His Life. What do I do?

(Nevada)

He is now gambling with borrowed monies and with a woman who is also using. I am paying his cell phone bill until he gets a job so I can stay in contact because my husband and I have sold him a car.

He has been late every month with his payment on the car and is now feeling entitled to the cell phone and not wanting to pay the bills. Should we repo the car and have the phone disconnected? Am I enabling him further?

He has been taking suboxene along with using heroin. What will this do to him? He has a 2 year old that thankfully is not living with him. However, I don't think he should even be allowed to see her.

He was very abusive towards me a few weeks ago telling me he will yell at me or talk to me badly when he wants to. Then apologizing in the next text. He has been living with his dad for a year.

I couldn't have him in my home any longer after he stole from my fiance and disrespected our home. I have paid for his medication bills and rent, put gas in his car, bought food for him.

He quit his good paying job saying the people he worked with are the trigger of his addiction. He is not reliable and lies about everything. I think he is going to end up dead and its really stressing me out!

I have talked to my employer about this because my job performance was starting to suffer. What can I do, if anything?

Alcoholism-and-Drug-Addiction-Help.com Answer

Your son is on the fast-lane towards self destruction and while there is only so much you can do, there are certainly things you can do differently that may help.

The first thing is to stop enabling him. As long as you're paying his bills and making life 'easy' for him, what incentive is he ever going to have to change? He has to start being held accountable for his choices and not live in a fantasy world of entitlement where he gets to demand what he wants.

Consequences create change, and right now your son isn't having to live with any of the consequences of the poor choices he continues to make because you're doing everything for him and giving him everything on a plate.

Secondly, you need to put boundaries in place and make it clear to your son that while you love him and always will, you're not going to let him be abusive towards you or speak to you in a disrespectful way. And you need to create a consequence if he does.

And finally, you need to let go, for the sake of your own sanity and well-being. You can't control or change what your son does with his life. Now that's easier said than done but somehow you have to believe that your son's life is in God's or a Higher Power's hands (whatever you choose to believe) and that his life will unfold however its meant to. Support groups like Nar-Anon can really help with this process.

Your son is only going to do something about his heroin addiction when he's ready. Encourage him to get professional help, but until he bottoms out and actually wants to turn his life around, the best treatment program in the world won't even be able to help him. That's just the nature of addiction unfortunately.

Never lose hope, but at the same time make peace with the fact that whatever is going to happen is going to happen. And if you'd like some additional advice on what you can do for your son that space constraints make difficult to go into here, try get yourself Help! My Child Is An Addict. The more knowledge you have the better equipped you'll be to be able to handle whatever it is you're faced with.

It's ever parents worst nightmare having to deal with an addicted child. But you can get through this. Don't ever stop believing that!

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