I’m so sorry your son couldn’t get a place to live, you/we just end up going round in circles with this. I felt pretty close to going to the doctors last week. It’s not having an end in sight that is the killer.
The day my son came back we put some ground rules in place – I have no idea how long they will stick. He was feeling bad about what he’d done, so it seemed a good time to do this.
So they are: we see your bedroom every day and you tidy it every day – hopefully one day’s worth is manageable. I never want to clear up a mess like that again. No hard drugs or tablets bought on internet in house; whatever he was taking were having a horrible effect. You must help out around house and go for a walk each day. I’m going to struggle to enforce this, I know.
I can see you digitally rolling your eyes, but I have to try something. Last night he came out and watched tv with us for a while and had dinner at the proper time – with us!!!!
I went on a forum for recovering addicts and asked them what they thought was reasonable. I’ve also found it helpful to read their perspectives on getting out of addiction, because I tend to lose patience and then my empathy walks out the door and I just nag.
I know that this may only hold for a couple of days but you never know.
The bigger problem is that I’ve asked him if he is serious about getting clean and I don’t get a very positive response. My worry is that at some point he’s going to have to be homeless and desperate, and then the fight back may look insurmountable.
I’m sad for all of us dealing with this. I was thinking at the weekend what it must be like to have a happy grown-up child and maybe grandchildren. This is such a waste of life.