Hi everyone,
Kate – I think of you every day and know that nothing is going to take that pain away, but hopefully in time it will be more bearable – I’m sorry I know how saying that doesn’t help now. I think you have a really good and honest perspective on your son’s situation. He was in a bad place but I don’t see that there was anything that you could have done to solve
this.
Februarymarie – I can’t imagine 10 years of this – I’m 5 years in, I’m so sorry. Your son was doing a PhD and had so much promise, its very hard to make sense of it all but you’ve been amazing in what you’ve done to try and help him.
Bump – I can remember getting so excited when my son came off H previously and expecting things to be easier, and the problems just changed. There was a lot of pain and bitterness that was directed at me – I guess you vent at the person you know loves you enough to take it. Your son has done brilliantly to get to 7 months down the road. Its full on when they live with us, there is no escape for us and we never get to fully relax. This with your long covid must be so hard for you. Like you, if I suggest getting a job or contributing I am made to feel that I am making his problems so much worse.
I’ve thought about you all so much over the last few weeks and have wondered how everyone is doing. I’ve not been on here because sometimes its just all too depressing to write about.
My son is still with me, still addicted to heroin, but really wanting to get off. The local addiction services are not fit for purpose. My son’s key worker is about 12 and has probably not taken anything stronger than a wine gum, which means that the advice and things he says to my son, are often ridiculous. To get on a methadone program (which has its own drawbacks, in that methadone is even harder to kick than heroin) you have to go to the addiction services 3 consecutive weeks in a row for a urine test to prove that you are using heroin. I know that probably sounds easy, but we continually get the first of 3 urine tests and then he doesn’t turn up to the next one, because he’s changed his mind.
During lockdown and beyond, because I live so far from where my son was living and working, he has become very isolated. He doesn’t come out of his room much, and doesn’t really get involved any more with cooking or any kind of chores. He wrecked a bedroom in the house which became full of flies and then moved to a nicer guest room. This is my partner’s house, so you can imagine how that went down. My son couldn’t make any connection between the stink in his room, his lack of personal hygiene and the flies. Then there were flies in the next bedroom after a while. I felt unable to order him back to the other room, and have now started redecorating it, with no offer of help from him. My son is 31 years old!
He is still buying H online and that uses all of his benefit. Last week he begged for £700 because he needed to order before his cash came in. The week before that he needed £180 for something (can’t remember) and 2 weeks before that £150.
This weekend he is at a festival which I have had to drive him to. He isn’t really well enough to cope with camping so I’ve booked accommodation for both of us, so that he can experience the festival, see his old friends and then come away when he’s ready. Last night I picked him up at 1 am. Tonight he wants to stay until 2 am and kicked off when I said it needs to be around midnight, because the accommodation is over 20 miles from site – turned out there was a really big event this weekend so there is nothing apart from in towns a good few miles away, unless you want to pay £300/night.
There are problems between my partner and my son, as you can imagine. There is fault on either side, and on my side, none of us have acted perfectly here. He now sees his only way of getting off as me renting him a flat in the city where he used to live and work (he didn’t hang out with other heroin users, but plenty of party people using other stuff). He’d like me to move there with him for 6 months to help him. I am so scared of him going back by himself, because his mental health is so fragile and he doesn’t have the capacity now to take care of himself. But where we are is very rural and deeply isolating for him. Am thinking about saying, I will rent a flat locally for you for 6 months in a small town near us, and then if you show you can make that work, we’ll help you to resettle in the city.
I had some counselling last week which helped but after having my son with us since June 2020 I just feel all out of strength and ideas. I am struggling now to hold it together at work. I go to meetings and find it so hard to string sentences together and come up with plans that make sense.
I’ve looked at rehabs and think he would really benefit because while getting off they wouldn’t let him just lie in bed all day. He’d have to start to function again.
I’m sorry for this being so long. I thought that maybe others were doing okay and that gave me hope, but it looks like we are all still struggling with the same things.
Lindyloo – I hope things are still good for you, it would be great to hear good news.
Thank you for listening x