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I’m so sorry for your situation and that no one responded to your message at the time. Your story is so sad, it was all stacked against you. I really hope that you were able to find help and that things are better than when you wrote this.
Hi Kulstar I remember your posts from a long time ago. It’s great that you are getting you’re life back, and must give others so much hope. I hope things are good with your family.
I really feel for you. I bet you’re a good person in a bad very bad situation. No one chooses to be an addict. If you have access to money and really want to get off, talk to a rehab provider. Do your research, because some are better than others. You can do this but you need to reach out for help. I don’t know where you live, but just talking to your local NA or Smart Recovery is a good place to start. Also on Reddit there are very supportive forums where people struggling with addiction help each other. Talk to others about their experience with rehabs and support services. Good luck, you can do this x
You’ve done brilliantly to get this far, really sorry to hear about your heart issues, that sounds very frightening.
You will get lots of support here but for more informed advice you might be better off going to Reddit and searching on the subreddits – these are individual forums focused on specific issues, with their own communities. There is the main subreddit for Methadone with 29,000 members, which comes up if you search ‘methadone’. There are other groups around opiate recovery, you just need to search within Reddit.
Good luck x
Hi Sleeping Beauty – your situation sounds very difficult. I can speak from experience of having a son who is a heroin addict who lived with me and my partner for all of lock-down and into last year. I broke all of the rules of common sense, I gave him money and shelter, and waited for him to want to change. In the end he got sick of having no money to buy normal things, and for having to go through the stress of buying H and eeking it out. The break for us came with him wanting to make that change and me funding a flat in a city that has really good addiction support services – which was really lacking where we live in rural Wales. I can imagine what your life is like, all of the mess and drama that comes with addiction and the lack of control that you have over the situation. Its must be very hard on your relationship and I’m guessing that your partner needs a lot of support with this.
From your post, I don’t really get the feeling that he is ready to want to change yet. Wanting to stop and actually being able to do it are very different. My son avoided a methadone program because it has a reputation of swapping one drug for another. Having seen how it works, I would say that getting on a program is a really good thing. It stops the need for cash and allows them to rebuild, without having to go through withdrawals and months of insomnia. There is no real high from methadone, it just allows them to be normal. There is another treatment called Subutex (and other names) but my son tried and didn’t do well on that. When he is in his most desperate moments and there is no money and he’s heading towards withdrawals, its worth trying to talk to him about treatment. My son was lucky in that he was given an appointment very quickly by the addiction services and had a prescription within days. In Wales its very different – and I never really got the feeling that they wanted to help – there just seemed to be endless appointments with staff that knew nothing about heroin and wanted him to prove that he was a user by providing a succession of weekly urine tests. He would be so desperate and lose interest in quitting while he waited for appointments.
Looking back, my son wanting to make the change, coincided with me running out of cash, so please do something before you get to the point that I did.
Addicts are very selfish, the world does revolve around them, and you have to look after yourself. Maybe find a group in your area that can support you – Families Anon or similar. I am fortunate that I work, and going out of the house to the office (planet normal) has really helped me in keeping slightly sane.
You mention others in your family with addiction issues, I don’t think that is surprising, it seems to follow-on like that, but so hard for you trying to keep it all together.
Goodluck I really hope things get easier.
Keep posting here, there are lots of lovely people that have been through this.
Hi,
Well done in getting to one month, that must have been so hard, especially when its been although Christmas and alcohol is being pushed at you around every corner.
I hope that you are getting other support, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, who are brilliant. They have physical and online meetings if you don’t feel up to turning up just yet. There are also really good subreddits on Reddit – like mini forums. Have a look at http://www.reddit.com r/stopdrinking.
My son had a problem with heroin and the people on there were an amazing help and source of information. There is also a really good book by Russell Brand on addiction.
I don’t think you should be doing this on your own, from what I have seen with my son and others, you have to change your life a bit, find things to fill the gap where drinking used to be, think about what does lift your mood – such as exercise, for me its going for a dog walk with a cup of coffee. Try and find things that make you happy that are not addictive.
It sounds like you have done the really hard part, but please don’t struggle on alone with this, there is so much help out there.
Good luck – keep going, you sound like an amazing person.
JEM
I’m really sorry to hear about your son’s drug taking and his father’s suicide. It’s very tough on you if he’s moved back home and is stealing. There are plenty of mum’s on this forum that have experience of being in this situation. My advice is that you have a rule that hat if he’s in your home he is also getting treatment, and that you can have permission to talk to his caseworker. I didn’t do this and wasted many years and £000’s. Ultimately you will run out of cash and your own health will suffer, so you are better implementing this sooner rather than later. Only they can make the changes to put them on the road to recovery – your son will probably try and blame you for his problems. It’s very hard to kick an adult child out or to know what to do if they aren’t mentally ready to stop doing drugs, but you have to protect yourself so that you are there to help when he is ready. Make sure you get support for yourself, Adfam can provide 1 to 1 counselling, Drugsfam have a really good helpline, there may be Famanon meetings in your area – have a look at their website. Focus on yourself, getting out and seeing people. If you have close friends and family, that you trust, tell them what is happening. It’s very easy for this to become your secret, which makes everything worse. If you work, make that a priority, it’s easy to think that you just can’t face it, but hopefully it gets you into a different headspace and is a distraction from the chaos and drama. Goodluck, and keep posting on here, there are so many mum’s going through something similar.
Hi I miss this thread. Since the site was updated participants on threads aren’t being notified of new posts and it’s difficult on a phone to read the most recent entries on a thread this long. ADFAM are hoping to fix the issues.
I hope you are all doing okay. My son is 6 weeks clean today. Fingers-crossed it continues.
Hi,
I just wondered how everyone is doing. I haven’t been on for a while because life has been chaotic.
I have temporarily moved in with my son, about 100 miles away from where my home is. I’ve done this to be there for him while he comes off heroin. Its been a really awful 4 weeks, obviously worse for him, because of withdrawals and just how ending opiate usage leaves you. To start with he was abusing sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds, leaving him in a much worse state than heroin, which just seems to make you lazy. He has handed over control of his bank account – which I think shows a definite intention to follow through on this. Being 4 weeks off is a major achievement, he has now started taking subutex which is an opiate substitute, a bit like methadone. This has a long way to run, and there is a lot that can go wrong.
He is not going to NA meetings yet, which was part of the deal, so I am trying to encourage this, otherwise we may as well be back in my town, as the whole reason for being in the city is that there are meetings on a daily basis.
I went to a Families Anonymous meeting last week – that was interesting, good to talk to others about it and to take some literature away. There’s nothing new in any of this but its good to talk face-to-face and to hear other people’s experiences.
My son is awake all night and asleep most of the day, and because of this I am sleeping pretty badly, which doesn’t help. I am carrying on my job remotely but not sure how long I can sustain that before the people that I am supposed to supervise start to complain. I am hoping to be able to go home for 2/3 days a week soon, but we aren’t there yet.
I’d love to hear how everyone else is doing – I think of you all a lot and hope that things are getting better.
I think you make some really good points, and I don’t think people on here are easily offended 🙂 I guess nicotine is one of the hardest things to kick and is so widely available. I agree that its a way of not feeling the bumps in the road and stresses of real life – and not growing-up. It would be so good if we could figure out how to help them to face all of that, and deal with withdrawals etc along with it. When you’ve trashed your own life, wrecked your closest relationships, coming back from all of that without a prop is probably very hard – I can see why they would just want to keep going toward oblivion. If no one believes in you, at your darkest time, its hard to imagine how you could start believing in yourself. That doesn’t excuse their behaviour or mean that we should be their doormats, its just how it is. I think that is probably where groups/meetings are useful. Most of the success stories seem to include attending meetings and mutual support.
The biggest thing that has helped me has been not living with my son for a few months, its helped me to put boundaries back in place that had completely gone south. We had some big arguments when he first moved out, but now he is calmer, and back into a more normal life, he recognises that he’s been a nightmare. I feel so sorry for anyone putting up with this at home, its bad for everyone.
Hi Joanie,
I think what you’ve done is amazing, in moving in with your son so that he was able to hang on to his job and start to sort himself out, and it sounds like its paying off. I’m sure that he appreciates what you’ve done. I hope that you take time for yourself now and make your health the priority – you definitely deserve a holiday.
Addiction is very selfish, it seems to destroy everything that it touches, but no one chooses it, its compulsive behaviour (like anorexia) – but we can’t fix it for them. My son was not a selfish person before this, in fact from our family, he was the nicest of us, he was the one that his friends went to for help, the one with the best sense of humour that cracked the room up. I’m guessing that’s true of lots of our kids, they are the sensitive souls and hopefully they still exist underneath all of the mess.
Penny – your childhood sounded very tough, I’m so sorry, it never leaves you. My dad was a cruel alcoholic but I honestly think that he would have been like that without drink, he was just hard-wired that way, the drink just made it more obvious. It would be great to fully understand all of this.
Jackie
This really rings bells on so many levels, your son is the same age as mine, and has his sleep pattern all messed up. It isn’t your responsibility, and this is what alarm clocks are for. If you want to do something, then maybe agree with him to leave his mobile on and closeby and you ring him once each morning, but this really is down to him. If he can’t do it at the start of a job he’s going to really struggle when the mornings are dark and cold in a couple of months time, so I wouldn’t feel too guilty.
I think its a really painful process that we go through, from when we first find out about our children’s problems and thinking that we can help them, to the gradual realization that there isn’t a lot that we can do other than tell them they are loved and provide support when they are ready to make changes. Someone on here called it ‘a slow death’ and its like that, a grieving process, in letting go of all of the normal things that you want for your child, to just hoping they survive their own behavour.
Hi Imagine Dragon,
I have asked someone who knows, and weed is unlikely to cause those symptoms so it sounds like a separate medical condition. Do you know if its got a lot worse since going to the docs? Was he coughing up blood when he went there today? If you think that he hasn’t told all of this to a doctor, I’d be inclined to try and get him to casualty if you can. Its hard, if he’s not scared by it, he probably won’t want to go. This is my experience, and your son may be very different: For quite a long time, I thought that he was doing weed, but it turned out to be other stuff as well. Its very hard to get them to open up and be honest about what is actually going on, but you might find an opportunity if he’s worried about his own health.
I know how scary this is, and how powerless you feel. Its the hardest thing, watching your child hurting themselves and not being able to do very much.
I really hope this shakes him up and he lets you get help for him.
Jackie x
I will post about the ADHD stuff when things calm down for you.
I forgot to say the book is called Original Sins.
Thinking of everyone this bank holiday.
I have so many memories of ruined holidays, but things are a bit better. My son finished a freelance art contract and came on holiday for a few days which was great. His usage is down but still has to do the big jump off heroin. He won’t be able to work to start with and this is where it gets tricky, I don’t know how it will go, because he doesn’t want to do rehab.
I am trying to appreciate the better days and just not having him sleeping his life away in a filthy room upstairs. He got an adhd diagnosis which seems to have motivated him to sort his life out and is very different on medication, his flat is actually quite tidy. We have such a long way still to go and I don’t think there is ever a point where the risks are gone, I see it now as a lifelong illness/condition where you have to make the most of the good times.
I listened to a brilliant audio book a couple of weeks ago by a chap called Matt Rowland Hill, its about his descending into heroin addiction and putting his life back together. His humour stops it from being too dark, but its worth a listen or read.
I hope that everyone gets some peace this weekend.
Lindy – your son has done brilliantly, that does give me hope.
Kate – you sound really positive, its great that you are volunteering with people in recovery, I hope your family are all doing okay.