FREEDOM

My son loves to claim that he has no freedom.  He says we treat him like he is two years old and that we don’t trust him to do anything.  He tells this to anyone who asks him what he likes to do for fun.  He wants others to believe that we keep him prisoner and don’t let him out of our sight.  Any chance that he has to make us look bad, he will take it.

What he says is not true, but he will never believe that.

As an oppositional defiant child, he thinks freedom is attained through defiance which "should" enable him to have all power and control over his life.  One of his control tactics is to wear us down until we are so tired of fighting with him that we slack off on the rules and expectations just to avoid a blow-up.    

But, we have been trying to stay strong with the rules and expectations, while encouraging him to find friends and new hobbies or activities.

We want to trust him.  We know that he needs to get out of his comfort zone and have experiences outside of our house—out in the real world that will help him know how to handle life as a recovering addict.  But, he rarely wants to go anywhere or do anything. 

Sometimes, I seriously wish he WOULD want to go somewhere!  Other than the time that he spends at school, he is at home with me almost ALL THE TIME! 

I admit that when he does go somewhere, my heart seems to drop into my stomach as I worry about him the whole time that he is gone.  Most of me is 99% sure that he is going to be just fine.  But there is that 1% that thinks, given certain circumstances, a screw-up could happen.  I don’t tell him that, though. I always act happy that he is going to go do something and I just ask him to check in with me, occasionally. 

Sometimes he gives me a hard time about my wanting him to check in with me.  Or, he scares me to death when he doesn’t check in and doesn’t come back when I think he is going to.  He hardly ever takes his cell phone with him so that I can call him and has even accused me of GPS tracking him with it.  (I don’t do that!)

Maybe my panic is more apparent, than I think it is, causing him to feel like I don’t trust him.  When I let my fears ramp up, it usually has more to do with terror than trust!  Any parent would worry about their child when they didn’t check in or come home when they were supposed to.  I just imagine that I have more to worry about than most parents do.

Anytime that I express any concern he twists it into the trust issue.  I can’t even be a normal concerned parent. 

One night, I was trying to sleep after we had a huge blow-up about us not trusting him.  My mind was racing and for some reason, I came up with another “poem”.  I generally am not a poet and have only just recently become a writer of sorts as I write about this whole teenage-son-drug-addict experience. 

But here is the second poem that I have written for my son.  This one could teach him how to have freedom, if he would be willing to take responsibility for it.

FREEDOM

F—inding the strength and

R—ealizing that you can

E—njoy the things of life

E—very 24 hours

D—oing the best you can by

O—wning your feelings and

M—aking your own happiness.

He does not appear to be as impressed by my poems as I am, but I hope that even if he doesn’t get anything out of them, someone will--sometime, somewhere. 

I hope that someday, he will stop blaming us for his unhappiness and dissatisfaction with the way his life is going. 

He has to be the one who makes his own happiness and finds joy his life. 

But, don’t we all? 

Therapy

My son goes to therapy every other week or so.  I don’t know what he is getting out of it or if it is even helping.

One of his biggest issues is his anger.  He over-reacts to everything and when someone says something to him that he doesn’t like, or if they try to get him to do something that he doesn’t want to do, he freaks out.  He has to learn that he can’t just fly off the handle yelling, swearing, and wanting to fight.

It seems like he is a time bomb and I never know what is going to set him off.

Some people say this is normal teenage behavior.  Yeah, for normal teens.  But, once your teen is an addict, no behavior is normal anymore.  You don’t know which mood, behavior, or event is going to trigger the desire to use drugs again.  And for him, we don’t know what is going to trigger his raging anger. 

Uncertainty is the name of the game and it is hard to live with. 

We hope for some good times that we can enjoy with him, but we always seem to be walking on eggshells around him--wary of the land mine being tripped and everything around it blowing up.

I purposely avoid talking to him just so that he won’t have anything to get upset about.  I don’t ask him any questions about his day or how he is feeling just so that he won’t bite my head off for asking.  Even if he does seem to want to talk, before we know it, he gets really negative, won’t listen to suggestions, or anything else that we have to say.  He thinks that I always expect the worst of him, but I don’t.  Part of the problem is that I expect the best from him and it is disappointing when he doesn’t even try to be the best that he can be. 

Therapy usually either starts a big blow-up right after we leave, or things stay calm for a day, or week.  But, there is always that one day every couple of weeks that turns into a big deal,  no matter how hard we try to avoid it.  Every time we feel like we are moving forward, we seem to get slammed back and we don’t catch up to where we started. 

It is so frustrating that we can’t find any way to get him and this family on a good path. 

I don’t know what else to try besides therapy.  I have to hope that something gets through to him and that his therapist will eventually figure out how to help him.  He does not like her though, and thinks that everything she does is stupid.  He usually won’t do any of the assignments that she gives him. 

She gave him an assignment to think about what other parts there are to him besides the addict and the recovering addict because she thinks that is mostly what he sees himself as.

He never did the assignment, but I did.

This is what I wrote:

I see him as a young man looking at the world in a new way, discovering new things.

I see him as a wonderful son.

I see him as an uncle who loves his nephew.

I see him as a talented photographer.

I see him as someone who can do anything he sets his mind to.

I see him as someone who is so smart he can teach himself new things.

I see him as someone who wants to be accepted and loved.

I see him as a scared young man.

I am so proud of him.

And so nervous for him.

I don’t know for sure how he sees himself.  I think the statements that I made about him would be like this if he had written them:

“I don’t know how I fit into this world.  I don’t feel like I fit in with people at school, church, or even my family.               

I think I am the person that everyone expects the worst of and that no one will ever trust.

I am the kind of person that no one really would want to have love them or would want to be loved by.  I think my nephew is cool, but I would not want him to be like me.

I think being a photographer would be cool, but it probably will never happen for me.  I will never have enough money or good enough cameras to become one.

I know what I want and I will do whatever I have to do to get it even if I have to get in an argument with my parents.  Eventually, I will get my way. 

I am smarter than everyone around me and I can’t believe how stupid everyone else is.  I can’t stand it when people try to tell me things that they think I should know.  I already know everything that they are trying to teach me and even if I don’t, I will never admit it.

I wish people would just accept me like I am and stop trying to get me to change.  I am what I am. 

The future scares me, but I will never admit that.  I want everyone to think that I am tough and that I know exactly where I am going and how I am going to get there. 

No one is proud of me.  No one thinks that I will ever be able to do anything good again.  I will never be able to be good enough.”

It makes me sad to think that he would see himself that way.  It is too bad that the positive outlook that he seemed to have this summer did not stick with him.

Rehab made an impact on him and he seems committed, most of the time, to stay off drugs.  But, somehow, something was missed in helping him to see that he can be whole and happy and that he doesn’t have to be angry at life.

One recovery program has this philosophy:  We understand that abstinence is not recovery.  Once clean and sober, the addict must be given the opportunity to recreate their life.  Our job is to allow those in recovery to ACT their way into right thinking, rather than THINK their way into right thinking.  This brings about the psychic change necessary to recover from alcoholism and drug addiction.  

I think my son did not have a chance to get all that.  He got the abstinence part.  Over the summer, it seemed like he might have started to recreate his life.  But, once school began in the fall, he seemed to fall out of the re-creating his life step.  He started having to live his life according to the rules of attending school and acting like a good student.  It made him seem to lose track of the person he had started to like being. 

And now, I don’t know how to get him back on the track of recreating his life.

I am afraid that if someone doesn’t figure out how to help him, one of these days it will be too late.   

I don’t want it to be too late.

The Moon and the Stars

Sometimes I just don’t know what happens.

The moon and the stars get out of alignment or something.

October.  One of my favorite months of the year.  I love Autumn’s weather and changing leaves.  My husband loves it because it is hunting season.  And this was a hunting day.  My son would not go with him so he went alone and was going to come back late that night. 

That afternoon, my son asked me what I wanted to do and I said that I wanted to go to a movie, but we couldn’t agree on one.  I didn’t have any other ideas because the weather was cold and rainy.  He couldn't come up with a plan either, so, he played the X-Box and I just did random things that needed to be done.

Later on in the evening, I got ready to go the grocery store to buy the two staples of life—milk and cereal.  I told him that I would buy him a pizza while I was gone and he was cool with that. 

Just as I was leaving, he said that he wanted me to take him to the video game store since I was going out anyway.  That made me a little bit frustrated because I had just taken him to the game store two days before.  He had wanted to buy a game that cost $35.00.  He only had $10.00.   And, he did his usual pestering act until I lent him $25.00 to pay for the rest of the game.

So, there didn’t seem to be much point in taking him to the game store that night since he was already in debt to me and I wasn’t going to let him go into debt to me anymore. 

But, he had a pile of games that he had put together to take to trade in.  I told him that the value of those trade-ins had to be more than enough to pay for the game that he wanted to get because I was not putting in one more dime.

That was a mistake.  He always has to get what he wants, when he wants it and if I have to put in money to make that happen, then that is what he expects me to do.  If things don't go his way, then there will be repercussions. 

My logic and his logic just don’t jive.  My logic says that if he owes me money, then I am not going to loan him any more until he pays me back.  His logic is that he will pay me back when he pays me back and I can keep loaning him money as long as he wants me to. 

So he got upset and started swearing at me.

When I didn’t change my mind, he came up with a new plan.  He decided that I should take him to the bank so that he could cash a paycheck.  When I told him that I couldn’t do that on a Saturday night, he accused me of not ever giving him his own money and of not letting him use his money for the things that he wants to use it for.  The fact that his bank isn't open at 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday night didn’t mean anything to him.  It was all my fault that he couldn’t have his money from his paycheck.

It didn’t matter that I could write him a check on Monday and that he could cash it on Monday and spend it on Monday.  He had to be able to buy a game—that night!

Everything started to spin out of control because he wasn’t getting his way and wasn’t getting what he wanted.  To me, he just kept getting more and more unreasonable and absurd.  He hates it when I say that he is being unreasonable, so his yelling and swearing escalated.  He told me that I am a bad mom, that I never do anything for him, and that I act like everything he says or does is stupid.  Then he said, “So, thanks, Mom.”

I was done with this and I started to go up the stairs to my room and I replied, “THANK YOU, too!”

In his emotional state, he decided that I must have said something else that starts with an F and ends with a U.  And charged after me and screamed, “What the F*** did you just say to me?”

I answered, “I said, THANK YOU!”

He was so out of control that he wasn't even listening.  Again, he said, “What the f*** did you just say to me?”

Twice more I had to reiterate that I had said thank you right back to him after he said the same thing in the same way to me.  I am not a bad mom, I spend my whole life doing things for him, and he had no right to say what he said to me, but I would never say to him what he thought I did. 

Not that he wouldn’t blink twice to say it to me.  He thinks it is perfectly fine to say stuff like that to me.  But, apparently, I better not say things like that to him.

I spent the rest of the night in my room.  I did not go to the store and I did not even have any dinner.

I cannot stand these blow-ups.

I don’t know how many F-bombs I can have thrown at me before they finally take me down.

Motivation

I was thrilled after we went to my son’s first High School Parent Teacher Conference.  I hadn’t been thrilled by any of his Parent Teacher Conferences since 3^rd grade.  But, at this one, all of his teachers said that he was doing very well, that he had a good attitude, that he tried really hard, and that he was going to have a great sophomore year.

I couldn’t believe it, but I was so happy!  He seemed to be happy, too. He was used to bad Parent Teacher Conferences that always led to lectures and unhappy nights at home.  Not this time!  It was awesome.

Halfway through the first quarter and everything was going pretty well.

I was so proud of him for how he had committed to handle school work, assignments, and all things school-related by himself. He was motivated at the beginning of the year and confident that he could do it.

It was very hard for me to step back and let him.

But, I did.

And then he got sick. 

Great.

I was hoping we could avoid that problem for awhile.  Getting sick and not doing the make-up work has always started setbacks in the past. 

When that morning rolled around that he was coughing, had a headache, sore throat, and stomach ache, I got that feeling of dread.

I gave him vitamins and Ibuprofen and tried to get him to go to school, but he wouldn't and missed a few days.  Days that I knew he probably could have gone, sick or not, but he wouldn't.   I reminded him about how missing days would make him get behind and that it would be hard to catch back up, but he still wouldn't go.  This was a pattern that I did not want him to get used to.

I thought I would check the school’s website for him to let him know what classes he might need to stay after school for when he went back.  I tried to tell him about three classes that he could concentrate on.  After I told him about the first class, he said, “It is taken care of.”  Then, when I started telling him what the next class was, he got very grouchy with me and told me that he had just said that it was taken care of.  I never did get to the third class because he acted as if he definitely did not want to hear any more about it from me.

So, I had to drop it and not get on his case about his grades.  It made me angry that I couldn't even have a conversation with him about school, though.  I should have been able to make an observation without him cutting me off and telling me to stay out of it.

I had to step back again, just like I was supposed to, and let him be in charge of school.

Sometimes people would ask me how his grades were and how he was doing in school and I would tell them that as far as I knew, he was doing fine.  They would act shocked that I wasn’t staying on top of it and that I didn’t really know for sure.  They always gave me the impression that I was very wrong to do that.  But, one thing we learned in family therapy was that school was his responsibility.  Not his parent’s responsiblity.  He had to take ownership of his education.  I thought it would be nice for him to be able to succeed at school without me nagging him.  I had to let him have that opportunity.  I hoped that it might help us get along better.   

Because, school has always been one of the biggest downfalls in our relationship. 

It was starting to feel like old times at this point.

I did not like that feeling at all.

Then, he went to AA with his sponsor.  They must have talked about school because he walked in the door at 10:30 p.m., and immediately wanted to do his homework.  He didn't go to bed until 11:30 p.m. and wanted me help him with his assignments.  Two days before that I was supposed to stay out of it and all of a sudden he was asking me for help.

What happened to make him actually do homework?

His awesome sponsor, of course.

He offered some great incentives to do well in school.  A first quarter 4.0 would get rewarded with $200.00.  And if he graduated with a 4.0?  He would get rewarded with $1,500.00 and a car.  His sponsor will do anything to help my son and the other guys that he sponsors.  I may have gone on and on about him in the past, and I probably will in the future, too because I appreciate how much he does and how he is a great example of the kind of  person that my son could be.

I should have made a big poster of “the reward” to hang in his room to remind him to stay motivated. 

Because I had no idea how long he would keep it going.

Something kept telling me it was going to be a long school year.

Proud

Every now and then my son says something, or in this case, writes something that makes me so very proud of him.

He wrote this for a school assignment:

“This has been a very eventful summer for me. I will be telling you about three stages of my summer, but first let me tell you a little about myself. I am a fifteen old recovering drug addict trying to get his life back on track. I currently have three hundred eight days of sobriety and that number is only going to get longer.  In order to do that I have to change some parts of my life, one of which is my performance in school and this is my start. Learning that was the first part of my summer.

               The second part was finally finding out what I wanted to do as a career. I found out that it was photography. I loved art, but I wasn’t any good at it. So I was pretty happy when I found out that photography was art. That was the second part of my summer.

               The third was when I finally decided I wanted to do something with my life and I was willing to do anything for it. Then I started a legal business, designed a logo, a name, and, a Facebook page. There is nothing I would rather have done this summer.”

Reading this made me feel pretty confident about his future and how the school year could go.  He seemed to be positive about his life at that point.   

I wanted to frame it and hang it in his room so that he would have a reminder of how he felt at the beginning of the school year.

I was pretty sure he was going to need it.

Me, too.

School

I decided since it was highly likely that he relapsed, but he swore up and down he didn’t, that I would say, in my mind "he has been mostly sober”.  At AA meetings, when he tells the group he is 270 days sober, I always silently change it to “270 days, mostly sober.”  What else could I do?  Insist that he start over at number one, when he insisted that he didn’t use?  I was glad that he thought of himself as being sober. 

He was about 280 days mostly sober when it was time to start the new school year at the high school.

I did not want him to go to that high school and I did not want to let him out of my sight.

I was so afraid.

During the entire summer, I felt like I spent my entire existence making sure that everything was just as right as it could be for him.

And now I had to let him go.

He said that since he hadn’t had hardly anything to do with any friends over the summer and hadn’t seen any of the kids he used to hang out with, straight or sober, for the last nine months, that he didn’t know what he would do when he went back to school.

I didn’t know what to think.

School alone has every trigger that there could be for relapse, but him saying that he didn’t know what he would do just made me feel so nervous.

I wanted everything to be just the way it should be so that he wouldn’t have a reason to relapse.  I know that sounds ridiculous and totally absurd, but every single part of my being does not want him to go back to using drugs.

And High school is the den of iniquity.

I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like for him.

Would he say, “I finally have some freedom and this is what I am going to do with it,” and then go right back to using drugs as if he had never stopped?

That’s what he did last fall after he was sick and stuck at home for 3 weeks.  His first day back at school, he was right back on the weed and whatever else he could get his hands on.

He went to his sophomore orientation day.  He had no one to go with and no one that he could count on to hang out with.

He had to be nervous, but he acted tough as if it were no big deal.

I surprised him with a cell phone.  I knew it would make me feel better if he had one.  And he had said that if he had one, he could call his sponsor or me, if he felt that he should talk to us rather than do something stupid.

He was excited about the cell phone for about two minutes.  As soon as he found out that it was restricted, he decided that he didn’t need it or want it and that was it.  He had been told many times that if I ever got him one, he would only be able to call or text certain people, and that there would be no internet access.  I guess he thought that was all right in theory, but not all right in reality.

When I tried to talk to him about it, he decided to strike out at me and hurt me. 

He said as sarcastically as possible, “Oh right, and when someone says, ‘hey man, give me your number,’ I can say, ‘No, I am not allowed to call anyone but my mom because she is my best friend.’”

Well, so much for thinking that for the most part, over the last few months, that we were pretty good friends.

It seemed like we had gotten back to normal in the past few weeks, even though I felt very cautious about letting myself open up.  I didn’t want to get stabbed in the back again. 

But, there is no such thing as normal.

Unless normal is knowing that he has an underlying thread of animosity about everything in his life.  And he was not afraid to let us know how mad he was about anything at any time. 

I know I have to stay detached and I know I have to not let  what he does get to me.  But, for me, that seems to be impossible!

He went to his half day orientation.

And didn’t take his phone.

Then, he got out early.  But, he couldn’t call me to come and pick him up because he had no phone!

While I was driving to the school, he was walking home.  Then, I waited and waited and he didn’t come out.

The longer I waited, the more nervous I got about where he was and what he was doing.  I thought my heart was going to beat right out of my chest. 

He called me from his only friend’s house and said that I wasn’t home when he got there, so he went to his friend’s house to call me and ask if he could hang out with him for awhile.  (This friend is one year younger than he is and still goes to the Middle School).

I was so relieved to know where he was and that he was okay.  But, I was also mad because at this point I feel like HE NEEDS TO BE WHERE I KNOW HE IS GOING TO BE and if I am going to pick him up from school, then he better be there for me to pick up! 

He didn’t see what the big deal was.

Great. 

He hadn’t even had one full day of school yet and I was getting attitude.

The first day of school just broke my heart. 

I got this text message during his lunch hour:

“Everyone is either a stoner, a jock, or a straight up nerd.  The only ones I fit in with are the stoners.”

I felt so bad for him.

I wanted to run right to the high school, take him out to lunch, and protect him from feeling like that.

But, I just texted him back and told him that HE is not a stoner anymore and that he WILL find friends who are in none of those categories because there are all kinds of people at school and in time, he will find good non-nerdy, non-stoner, non-jock friends.

We texted back and forth all during his lunch hour!

He actually used his phone!

That felt like progress.

??Relapse??

This has been the hardest chapter to write. 

I think that relapse is one of the hardest things for the family members of the recovering addict to accept.  It can happen and everyone knows it can.  But, no one wants it to and it is heartbreaking when it does.

The next day my son acted just as lethargic and out of it as he had the previous day. 

I told my husband that we could not delay the inevitable any longer and that we were going to drug test our son that afternoon.  I didn’t want it to be positive, but I thought that at least we would know if we needed to find out if something else was wrong with him because this all-over-the-place behavior could not keep happening.  There had to be some kind of explanation for his out of control anger and actions.  We had no other ideas about what could be going on with him.  It was so much more than just being overworked and tired.  I did not want it to be a relapse because he had been doing so well.  But, you never know what is going to trigger a relapse and something about working in the garage, probably did.

When my husband got home from work, we called our son in from working in the garage and told him he needed to go pee in a cup.  He said he would, but I sensed some reluctance. 

I didn’t really know everything was going to spiral out of control in such a big way from that one test.

I have never seen a kid freak out and lose control like he did. 

As we were watching for the results, he made sure to reaffirm that there would be a positive result for amphetamines.  As if I didn’t know that.  It seemed to me that he thought something would be masked on a drug test by the fact that it would already show positive for amphetamines.  (Adderall, that he takes for ADHD is an amphetamine). 

The drug test showed positive for benzodiazepems and opiates.  (Not even amphetamines, which was weird). 

Great. 

While we were reading the fine print on the drug test directions to figure out what benzodiazepems were, he asked us what the drug test showed and when we said that it was positive in two areas, he totally lost it. 

For the next 4 hours, all hell broke loose in our house.  I can’t even say heck, to put it mildly, because it was hell. 

He raged and yelled and screamed.  Then, he cried and sobbed.  He was convinced that now he was going to get sent back to rehab for something that he didn’t even do.

Neither parent had said anything at all about rehab.  We were still trying to figure out what the results of the drug test meant.  We kept trying to tell him that he wasn’t going back to rehab, we just wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on.

But, he wouldn’t listen. 

He said that the drug test was wrong and that he hadn’t used anything.  He wanted us to believe him and not the drug test.  He wouldn’t stop yelling and screaming F-bombs at us.  We couldn’t even get a word in edgewise.  I couldn’t believe this was happening.  It was like being in a movie that I wouldn’t even want to watch. 

I even tried just plain telling him to shut-up so that we could talk and then he came at ME very threateningly and told me to NEVER tell him to shut up again.  Wow.  Things were spiraling out of control and we couldn’t seem to stop them.

My husband stepped between us and told my son that he is not allowed to talk to me like that.  So, then he threatened my husband, which made me feel that I needed to get between THEM.  We were going around and around in a crazy circle.

One of us needed to go to the pharmacy to buy another drug test so we could get a second opinion.  I thought my husband should go, but he was nervous about leaving me alone with our son.  I didn’t really think my son would do anything to me, but I was pretty sure that something bad would happen between them if I went to the store and left the two of them alone together.

While my husband was gone, he called my son’s sponsor and told him that we were having a really bad day.  His sponsor was out of town, but he immediately sent some friends to come to our house to help us out.  They were going to bring us some 6-panel test kits that are used at sober living centers.  He felt so bad that all of this was going on and he wasn’t here to help our son through it.    

But he did call my son.  He tried to get him to calm down.  I think he probably told him that everything was going to be okay.  I know he also said that the drug test kits that he was sending to us would show the true results and that my son would have to accept them.  My son was adament that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and he seemed happy to comply with what his sponsor wanted him to do.  He was still so upset that he was crying the entire time he talked to his sponsor and kept saying that he didn’t want to go back to rehab.  He cried so much that he got physically sick and sounded like he was having an asthma attack, too. 

After he hung up, I tried to get him to use his inhaler so that he could breathe better.  He just swore at me and told me that he didn’t care whether he could breathe or not.  So much for seeming like he might have settled down.

While we were waiting for his sponsor’s friends to come, we used the drug test kit from the pharmacy.  It still showed positive results for Opiates (my husband bought the most expensive kit there was and then it didn’t even test for Benzodiazepems). 

I looked online to find out what drugs were in the categories of Opiates and Benzo’s.  Opiates could be pain killers like Lortab, but even harder drugs like Heroin.  Benzo’s are the class of drugs that Valium and Xanax are in.  Both would explain why he slept so much on Sunday, and how he was so tired, out of it, and lethargic on Monday and Tuesday.

The results of this 2^nd test did nothing for his attitude.  He started yelling and raging again.  Was he angry that he got caught?  Did he think he could hide his relapse behind amphetamines/adderall on a drug test and then it didn’t work out for him because the drugs he took weren’t amphetamines?

I was so glad when his sponsor’s friends came.  They were very nice and helpful.  Both were recovering addicts.  One was a guy who was now working in a drug rehab center.  He talked to my son outside for awhile and seemed to help calm him down.  Then performed the drug test himself.  It showed the same positive results as the first test.  He told my son that he needed to accept that he had made a mistake and move on from there.  He said that this did not need to be a setback.  He told us to go ahead and send the Walgreen’s test to the lab and my son seemed to agree that he wouldn’t be able to argue with the results of that, but was still adamant that he hadn’t used anything. 

They both told my son that trust has to be earned back and that we have every right not to trust him.  He was nice to them and agreed with everything they said.  He is really good about saying the right thing and acting okay toward other people.

We hoped that everything they told him would help his attitude, but as soon as they left he reverted to the upset, angry, raging madman that he was before they came.  He would not stop insisting that he hadn’t used anything. 

Things did not get any better that night.  In fact they got even worse.

Throughout all of the arguing and yelling and peeing in a cup, he kept going out into the garage and trying to work.  It was like he had an obsession with getting in as many hours of work as possible, even though we were trying figure out what he had relapsed on and WHY! 

Then, something very coincidental happened. 

He “found” a container of old prescription bottles in the garage. 

As soon as I saw the container, my heart just dropped into my stomach. I could not believe it was in the garage and I immediately remembered why it was and what was in it.  Some of the bottles still had pills in them, and some didn’t.  There also should have been some Lortab and a bottle with about 2 Valium in it, too, but they weren’t there.  I was pretty sure that if had prior knowledge of that container of medication in the garage, then the Lortab and Valium were part of the equation, even though the bottles weren't there. 

So what was up with vehemently denying out loud that he had used anything, but then magically finding a container full of evidence that there were drugs that he could have used in the garage?  What did that mean?

Was he trying to admit to relapsing without verbally admitting relapsing?

I could not believe that container was there.  I was SO MAD AT MYSELF! 

I felt so stupid. I had a recovering addict in my home.  And I had totally forgotten about a container of prescription painkillers and medication hiding in my garage.  How long had he known they were there?  When had he discovered them?  A year ago, a few days ago, or that day?  I had no idea.  But, it sure seemed like he knew they were there during the last few days.  I had exposed my recovering addict son to danger and didn’t even know it.

About 1 ½ years before that time, a family member of my husband was having some emotional and life problems.  She had supposedly tried to take her own life and ended up in the E.R.  But, the hospital didn’t want to admit her because she doesn’t have insurance.  So, even though we wanted her admitted to the psych unit, she had to be released to someone’s care.  She had already worn out her welcome with other family members, so we had to let her stay with us.  We did everything we could to suicide-proof our house, quickly.  I gathered up all of the prescription medicines and put them in a container to make sure they were inaccessible to her.  I remembered giving them to my husband to put in his safe.  I was not sure how they ended up in the garage instead of the safe.  Maybe we both decided to just stash them in the garage since we were in a hurry and meant to put them in the safe later. 

But, we both forgot about them--For one and a half years.

My advice now?  Never, never, never, ever keep prescription pain killers and medications just in case you might need them someday.  Once you have recovered from whatever they were prescribed to you for—dispose of them!  Keeping them is such a stupid, stupid thing to do. 

It was highly likely that whatever he had taken that day or in the past few days, came out of that container in the garage.  I was pretty sure that there were other bottles in it that weren’t in there when he showed it to me.  So where were the other bottles, or what else did he have access to out there? 

I felt like I had put candy in front of a kid who is not allowed to have any. 

But, it also made me really mad that he had taken something, whether it was right in front of his face or not. 

We told him that as of right then, he wasn’t going to be able to work in the garage anymore and he started ranting about how he wouldn’t be able to earn enough money to get his laptop if he didn’t work in the garage. 

Then, he decided that since he had earned all of the money he was ever going to be able to earn in his entire life, he was going to go buy his laptop RIGHT THEN and wanted me to drive him to Best Buy.

Seriously.  He just had 3 positive drug tests and freaked out on us for hours and then I was supposed to drive him to the store and reward him for his behavior?

I made the mistake of laughing at that idea.  How could he possibly think that after relapsing and raging at me all night that I would take him to buy a laptop?

So, he punched a hole in our pantry door while screaming and yelling at me for not being willing to take him to Best Buy.  I had the thrill and pleasure of being called a b!#@& AND a d!*k. 

It hurts my feelings SO MUCH when swears and me and calls me names.  At first I laughed because he called me
a d!*k, which is usually a name reserved for people of the male gender, but then I just started crying and sobbing.  My emotions had taken all that they could take for one night and I turned into a basket-case. 

The only thing I wanted to do was get far away from my son.  I said that I could not stand one more minute in the house with this child of mine treating me the way he was treating me and acting like nothing was his fault or responsibility.  I could not stop thinking about the awful things that he had said to me throughout the night.  As my husband was holding me, listening to me cry, something switched in my son.

He came and sat by us on the couch and became remorseful.  He tried to snuggle up to me and tell me he was sorry for how he acted.

What?

Was he afraid that I would really leave, since I am his greatest advocate and the only one who sticks up for him or is willing to do things for him (in his opinion)? 

Did he realize that he had actually gone too far this time with his raging?

Or did he have another agenda for acting sorry? (Like still being taken to Best Buy)?

I didn’t know. 

I stayed. 

There was no resolution that night.  But, there was also no more yelling and raging.

I could only hope that he realized that he screwed up big time and that the thought of going back to rehab scared him enough that we will never have to go through another relapse experience again.

He really relapsed.

I know he did.

I just don't know why. 

P.S. (We sent the test strip in from the kit that we bought at the pharmacy to the lab.  The pharmacy kit did not test for benzodiazepems, which we did not realize at the time, but when we got the results back a few weeks later, it did show positive for opiates, specifically -- codeine.  And about two or three months later, my husband was looking for something in the garage for work that he hadn’t used in over a year.  When he found the box, it had some prescription bottles in it—Tylenol 3, Lortab, something that we couldn’t even read the label on, and Naproxen.  They were all empty, but one—it had one Tylenol 3 in it.  One of the bottles did not even belong to anyone in our family—the one that I couldn’t read what was actually in it.  The Tylenol 3 could have given the positive for codeine on the drug test.  Just more evidence that he had a stash in our garage.  We now have a key lock on the door that leads into the garage from the house.  He is pretty mad about that lock and can’t believe that we don’t trust him to be able to go into the garage if he needs to.  I am pretty sure that it is going to take years to feel like we can totally trust him, especially if we have any more of these relapse episodes).