update

[lovemyson]

My son is finally sleeping yeah! He had his first counseling session last night,to my surprise it was family night,my hubby and I stayed. I was surprised to find out I fit the total co dependent role. The movie we watched pretty much put the blame on my husband and me,If we had a life and a happy  marriage our kids wouldnt act out with drugs.(actually have two others that are drug free) Whatever,blame the parents thats the easy way out. He was completly bored and thinks the sessions are a waste of time,he goes back tonight by himself. He also has 3 narc anom meetings he has to attend per week as well,he is not a happy camper. In fact he is back to his usual pain in the butt self. Guess that means he is feeling better. The sub is working very well,I just filled the script,it is very expensive over 200 bucks,worth every penny if it works. Hopefull my insurance will cover it. if not,oh well easy come easier go. I will Keep every one posted as every day is a new journey,I am feeling the effects of no sleep and want to go into hybernate mode at this time,so I will check in later. bye,mom

[lovemyson]

He has started to taper off the suboxone,down to 2 per day,he sped it up as he feels like he doesnt need 4. he would have been down to 3 starting today. I am not sure this is a good idea,but he is an adult and needs to feel like he is in control of his recovery. Again, I can only make suggestions on what he should do. He doesnt want to w/d off the sub as bad so he is doing it his way. He is doing pretty good,he actually went fishing yesterday,his first love before the g/f came into his life. It is nice to see him acting more like himself again. He told me he actually likes the counseling sessions,thats a plus. I am back to working my 2 jobs today:( oh well back to the grind stone... anyway,i will post later to keep everyone updated...

[alwaysanaddict]

I am so happy to hear that he is progressing!!! please keep us updated. I am relatively new to this site and am in awe with the amount of compassion and truth.

glad your son is doing well. :-)

[lovemyson]

I actually had my hubby do a drive by to make sure he was at his meeting,he was. He would have been pissed if he knew we were checking up on him. He is actually starting to like his meetings as he is a very social by nature. The addiction had him totally isolated with the g/f. It is wonderful to see him actually enjoying other people. He actually said he enjoys being with the guy friends again,which back in the day before the addiction he would have never cut his friends off. We(the fam) always took a back seat. He has learned some valuable lessons and i am sure there are more to come,who his real friends are and his Family that stood by him. He is actually 22 yrs old(not a kid anymore) I cant actually make him do anything. I can only make strong suggestions and hope he listens...He is actually doing very well,and tapering off of the suboxone already. Down to 4 per day starting tomorrow,he started at 6. I am very hopeful and prayerful everyday...And thankful to all of you who have taken the time to care and offer your help to me.. this site is a godsend and I look forward to posting and hearing fom everybody..I will keep you posted on his  journey...Good thoughts to all...

[alwaysanaddict]

I give you a lot of credit for standing by your son and giving him the support he needs. 3 years ago my mother and father stood by me, but I am a little older and did not live at home. we also did not have a close relationship and i was worried. I had no one else to turn to exept my boyfriend.

Now I have the closest relationship to my mother and father then I ever had before!!!

good luck

[Lotsatrout]

I wouldn't worry about a group of guys from "teen challenge"  Those guys in that program are on a mission and on it 100%.  They are not in that program for girls.  They are in it for a substance free life and most of all, God.  It is the number one successful program on the Earth with a success percentage or right around 75%.  Most all of those who go through teen challenge have a life changing experience that goes along with their sobriety.  I am very knowledgable about this program and have met a lot of people in that program.  It is simply unbelievable what happens to those men after God gets ahold of their lives.  Incredible!  Everything in their lives changes... not just their craving for drugs or alcohol.  

[LIZZIE LOU]

i know that you "want" to trust and believe in your son...but please be careful.   it is very early in his recovery.

i remember deciding to let davis drive himself to meetings too...but was surprised to find out that he wasn't attending...but going to visit his friends instead.

now this is just "my" opinion...and mine alone...but i would not let him associate with any of his old friends.   that is if you can even control this.   getting clean and staying clean means breaking away from anything and everything (one) that was part of his addiction and use.  i would just be very careful about giving him too much freedom too soon.

huggs,
kim

[FLaddict]

Well as far as the friend. its a 50 50 thing for me. On one hand I want to say keep him the heck away from him.. the would be bad influences on each other. but on the other hand if this friend is also clean now there is a chance they could be "clean buddies" together. I know from gettin clean the first time at a young age its hard being young and doing it. You can't relate to older people who are clean. YOu feel like you have nothing to look forward to.  I would go with your 'mother's instinct" on this one.  Maybe ask them to hang out at your house instead of going out, get a feel for their friendship first.

As far as the girlfriend.. I have a feeling she is not just trying to make him jealous.. she seems like the kind of girl who needs attention from boys to feel good about herself. So she probably is doing this where she is. And then using it to get a reaction out of your son, even a negative reaction is attention.

Good luck to you, keep us posted

[lovemyson]

Every day is getting better,he is going to his counseling with out a fight,we actually let him drive by himself last night. Tonight he is going to the n/a meeting with someone from his class. I do believe that he truely wants to be clean.He actually had someone offer him drugs yesterday and he said,hell no i am never doing that **** again! I was very proud of him and he was proud of himself.  He actually looks alot better and is gaining some weight back. The only down fall is he talked to the  g/f and she got him riled up a bit. Made him freak out that she may be going fishing with her group and a group of guys from teen challenge, I think she did it on purpose to make him jealous,and it worked. I told him he is giving her way too much power over him and if he cant trust her than she isnt the right girl for him. trust is everything in a realtionship... anyways we will see how this plays out. i will post later,bye

[lovemyson]

I hope you are right,He did say he liked getting high,the way it made him feel. I pray that nothing horrible happened to him. He is hanging around an old friend(a user) I dontlikeit at all. This kid has detoxed for approx same time as my son,not by choice ,because of his supplier being arrested. My sons supplier as well, he is soo  lucky he came to us when he did,or he would probably be in jail as well. she got busted a few days later. what do you think about him hanging out w/this kid. He said he feels bad because he gotthis kid started on oxy.I know for a fact he was buying from this kid at one time(i snooped his phone text message) I just want to isolate him and keep him away from bad influences.(not realistic) I know I have to let him make his own choices,but i hate it.. I am conflicted on what to say or do, he is hard to trust,he has lied to me so many times before..

[lovemyson]

Your post gives me hope. Thanks for all the info,by the way you have great insurance. I know I need to surrender his problems to him as he is the only one who can change his situation. Thanks for the reality check,I can and was becoming all consumed by his addiction. I have even been dreaming about it!  My brain has been soooo busy trying to come up with a solution to fix the problem, and it cant,as it is not my problem to fix..It was so much easier being a parent when they were small,letting go is going to be hard,but i know i have to. I probably over compensated with my kids as well,trying to be good to them,may have actually hurt them. He was trying to get me to make him something to eat the othernight after the rest of the fam had eaten. Normally I would have jumped up and fixed him something,I realize now he has to help himself,even in the smallest ways. I am learning to do things different as well. Manipulation is no longer in the game. I am trying not to worry(which i forget sometimes) as I once heard a quote "worry and faith can not be present at the same time" I have to keep hoping and have faith that he will be healed,it is probably the hardest  thing i will have to do as well. This is a journey for both of us,mine for letting go,his for taking control of where his life will go.

[FLaddict]

Just to through this out there.  I was never abused as a child and I still did drugs cause i liked them. We all have our reasons, some people use it to escape pain,  Some of us just did it to do it..

[lovemyson]

Thanks for sharing, I am very sorry that your Dad was abusive to you,you deserved more. Every child deserves parents to love and protect them,know that you have a heavenly father that loves you more than anything. I have always wondered about my son,if something happened to him.. He had a grade school coach that was arrested for being a molester....He would never admit anything,but it has always been a concern of mine. I always wondered what could have happened to him that he would turn to drugs to hide from the pain and escape reality...I guess I will never know.Maybe I am too paranoid and he did it just because he likes it(thats what he said) I was hoping his counseling would help address any and all issues he may have. I am hoping it will help me as well.

[SoberGirlsMOM]

I am also the mother of an addict and I feel your pain.  Today is day 50 clean, and I am thankful for that, but her addiction today is hers and hers alone, as is her sobriety.  Her addiction/sobriety no longer controls my life, I too had to surrender something.  My daughter went to an inpatient detox/first step program that cost $10,000, thank god for our health insurance, they paid for all except $117!    

Our health insurance had already paid $5000 (a couple of weeks before rehab) for an ER visit for a seizure she suffered due to Klonipin withdrawal.  Apparently she snorted her whole prescription in a short amout of time and didn't have any for awhile.  When you are a Benzo user like she was and then just stop, your brain throws a fit that results in a seizure and can be very dangerous.  This scared her for a little while, but not for long, because she was right back in the game.  She kept having little episodes after the ER visit, it was like she would zone out, sweat heavily and her pupils were extremely dialated, it was like she was on the verge of a seizure or maybe it was even a granmal seizure, it may have been overdosing, again this scared her, but as soon as she felt better, it was game on.  Then 2 weeks after that ER visit they paid $13,000 for an ER/Ambulance visit after she flipped her car in a single car accident, her only injury was a scratch that was less than the size of dime above her lip!  Of course if she really had been injured she wouldn't have felt any of it because she had enough Oxycontin and xanax in her to be comfortably numb.  She totalled her new car that I bought her last fall for graduation and so that she would have a safe vehicle to drive back and forth to college (she went for 1 semester and passed maybe one class, in HS she was 13th in her class and had a 3.87 GPA, I paid around $9000 for tuition and living expenses for this 1 semester), our car insurance paid $14,000 of the loan, there is a balance left of about $2500. While at the ER after the wreck, I got her purse and took all the pills away, her father and I (we divorced when she was 5) decided that one of us would stay with her 24/7 until she could start to feel the pain of withdrawal.  We did this in hopes that she would go to rehab and once out of the drug haze, really look at this and see if this was really what she wanted for her life.  She no longer had any transportation so staying home wasn't problem, when she called her party friends they wouldn't come get her or bring her anything with me right there with her and her best friend had already tried an intervention the day before the wreck so she told her that she needed a break from "being her friend" because she could no longer watch the trainwreck that was coming.  Out of everything so far that had happened this part was the one thing that really hit home, this is the one thing that I could tell she really felt and it hurt.  At the ER they gave me a prescription for a mild muscle relaxer and a non-narcotic painkiller, so I gave her those as prescribed and I gave her just enough xanax to ward off a seizure but not enough for her cravings.  I had her take them in front of me so that she couldn't snort the xanax.  When I say that I stayed with her 24/7, I mean I slept with her, I held her when she was shaking and freezing and I got her a cold rag when she was sweating.  I just kept telling her that I loved her and that if she wanted help all she had to do was ask.  She finally broke on day 3 and told me everything from her first time using all the way to that day, and within about 5 hours we were at the rehab facility.  When I called them they had one spot open because someone didn't show up that was supposed to, so by the grace of god, he carried her from that car wreck to that one spot that just so happen to come available when I called.  

I love my daughter and she is my only child, I have always overcompensated her for two reasons, 1) because of guilt for the divorce and 2) because I lacked so much in my childhood, that I gave her everything I never had and then some.  She never had to work for anything really, she had jobs during high school but that was just extra money for her and she never had any responsibility in our household, I always had so much responsibility when I was a child that I didn't make her do anything, looking back now I see my mistakes.  Today I give my daughter a place to live, food to eat and a ride to work, the rest is up to her, in all aspects of her life.  I am hopeful that she stays clean, but I can't do it for her and I know this.  Yes our childhood does shape our being, so we all have issues but we don't get to always be victims and we don't get to blame everyone else for our actions.  The blame game is counter-productive and it does not help anyone get sober or stay sober, as a matter of fact it is destructive and a good excuse to use again.  

So LoveMySon, don't be too hard on yourself, our children are at the age now that they control their choices and we can no longer do it for them.  Letting go is hard, but it is the only way for them to take responsibility for themselves.  

We are all happier today, I am for sure, surrendering her problems to her was so hard, but I have to say I feel so much better.  Of course I worry, I am her mother, but I can only control what I do!  Hang in there, it is a rough road, but work on what you can control, the rest is up to him!

My prayers are with you and your family.  By the way, when I read back over this post, I think maybe my daughters story would make a GREAT Insurance commercial, never leave home without it!!

[lurker]

You may be the total codependent, but you deserve a ton of credit for helping your son.  Someday he will thank you.  You're a great parent and should be proud that you've faced this problem head on.  Your son is vey lucky to have parents who care!!

[beachtowel]

My father was my core issue we hated each other from when I was very small....he called me all kinds of vile names and beat me with his fist when I was a very small boy......
If I accidently spilled a glass of water at the dinner table when I was young I would get a very hard back hand across the face........etc.......etc........

I was in so much pain mentally till finally I started using and felt the pain go away.......The day he died I was relieved and happy for our family my brothers and sisters and really my Mom who my dad treated like s h i t for many yrs......

There is some truth to the mental developement and the effect that parents have on their kids but when they get older they have to learn to live their own lives.......
Parents do enable to an addict after all it is there son or daughter..........

Anyway I'm glad he is at least trying even though from your post he seems very dis-interested in the whole rehab process.......I hope that proves to be false......

You couldn't help him stop but in his recovery if you could be there for support it would mean a great deal to his success.......
I would go to the Narconon with him and participate and then talk about what was learned......
Its healthy to share those experiences in my opinion.......

by the way you sound like a very good person don't put to much stock in the fact that it was your mistakes as a parent that started your son on drugs.......I know your bigger than that......good luck..

[LIZZIE LOU]

i was wondering the same thing and didnt quite understand higherpowered's response.

[FLaddict]

is something that was posted funny??

[HigherPowered]

hehe!

[FLaddict]

thanks for the update... glad to hear he is sleeping and back to being a typical teenager...\

continue to keep us posted mom