Paying off a child's drug debt

It is a nightmare. You and your family will find yourself up to your neck in it and living in fear. Once the dealers know you are the source of the money you will have no peace. They will threaten your son to get money out of you.
Police.

Speak to your local community garda. Give them the details
Google the details for your local Drug Task Force and contact one of the support agencies listed.
Don't give him any money.
Your son is a drug dealer and user.

If you pay off your son's debts you will have a lifetime of paying off his debts. Go to the police and take him with you. If he won't come, kick him out. He's making you & your house a target.

When an elderly relative who had cognitive decline died, we found lots and lots of unused medication hidden away in a wardrobe. I wouldn't rely on the aspect of someone having a lot of controlled drugs to not believe anything else. There's also the possibility that your son was told that and believed it, even though it was a lie. I'm another one that thinks it might be a deliberate debt to force him to keep dealing.

I highly doubt he lost them and I highly doubt the guy he got them from got them from his deceased grandfather.

Your son needs help to break away from his drug use, deceit and debts.

Please make contact with some local charities that support young people and their families. You will need to find out whether £850 is the total your son owes - paying it might get him off the hook with dealer. But if he isn't supported to break the cycle then he will be straight back to dealing and using and potentially escalating from selling his own things to selling other people's.

He could get a police record for selling drugs.

I would call the police and then move.

He’s not that great a liar.
He knows that you want to see the best in him and I’m guessing that you make excuses for him due to his ADHD. He admitted some things (drug use) but made up the rest to make you feel for him with a little pinch of fear. I bet he said that he won’t do it again?

So sorry you're going through this OP, and the stories upthread all sound so familiar.

My friend's son did similar and they bailed him out, twice. The third time, when they wouldn't pay off his debt, he robbed them of everything they had of any value - jewellery, watches, hi fi, tv's, a couple of designer handbags - anything he could sell. They refused to have him back in the house after this. He dossed around at various mates until one day they got a call from the police: he was in hospital, having been beaten up by a dealer he owed money to.

When he came out of hospital, they still wouldn't have him back home, but his (very strict) grandfather did. He made him earn his keep by working in the garden, helping with DIY etc while he recovered. GF kept him on the straight and narrow, then when he'd been off the drugs for a couple of years, his DF gave him a job at his company.

Twelve years or so on, he's stayed clean and out of trouble, has been promoted several times, is buying a flat with his girlfriend and has his life on track. He freely admits he would never have done it without the "tough love" approach.

He was happy to be a drug dealer and spend his profits without any concern for anyone except himself.

Shop him and let him understand the consequences.

Otherwise, he will continue dealing and taking drugs.

Additionally, some of those meds are morphine. It's supposed to be signed for as it's a CD, but the pharmacy delivery to her home and just drop it inside the porch I found several bags when I went round recently. I made a complaint because it was just left lying on the floor in the porch and anyone could have got their hands on it.

I'd also agree he is lying.

If you're going to pay for it, then I suggest you implement some VERY strict rules.

1. He needs to get a job to pay you back.
2. He is grounded other than his school and his job.
3. No phone! I'd start by changing his number, he can then have a brick phone so can't look up these people, and he can only use the phone at certain times and downstairs in a room with someone else.

If he is not willing to do the above, then I'd get the police involved.

You could talk to the doctor who knows about his condition and medication he's on too. For support at the very least. You could get support for yourself too for family members of addicts. It could be a big support and you could hear other views/experiences

I’m on the dex for adhd so know 1st hand what he means, paying it off to him is justifying it & he’ll likely rack up more going foward, has he any gold or designer clothing , Xbox ,ps etc sell them to pay it off trust me he’ll sharp learn faster when he’s suffering.

I agree with others. If you possibly can do, move.

I missed the would 'could'. It should have said I could have several boxes accumulated. My point was that the NHS do prescribe 100 tabs or more at a time and people can often accumulate meds. I know because I've just returned several bags of my mothers unused medication to the pharmacy.
So it wouldn't be a stretch for someone to get their hands on grandad's meds when he passed away.

Ye have 3 options. Go to the police (and it could go well or it could have serious consequences for you all), help him pay the drug debt (but he would have to have absolutely no contact with these people again, which I don't know how likely that is if your son has a bad addiction or number 3, leave your son to sort the problem out himself and ye stay out of it (and stop enabling him also). Is he working? Has he the option of taking out a loan. Does he feel able to talk to the guards? Whatever ye choose, your son needs help. He is nearly an adult so it will be up to him whether hes ready to accept help. The only things ye can do is not to yell or criticise him (he needs to decide to fight for himself, it'll only make him feel worse) and not to enable him and keep appropriate boundaries there. That will be the hardest part and ye may have to throw him out without criticising if necessary. 'Im sorry but, I can't live with that behaviour in my house because I find it too hard, it's not good for me' etc.

Why are you fulfilling repeat prescriptions for a controlled drug you do not always need and have a plentiful supply of already?

Agree with many other previous comments. There are few options:

Pack up everything and move and get him in some expensive program

Disown him and call the police for your own safety

i guess there is the fantasy option of hiring someone big and scary to act as a relative who pays the debt and warns them off but you need to be sure it’s just scumbag teenagers and not some large organized crime ring, your son isn’t honest and I agree with others the debt may not even exist in the way you have been told it does.

If you pay the debt and let him stay you will still be living with a drug addict though and that never ever ends well

You should watch the new Julianne Moore film Echo Valley about consequences of bailing them out repeatedly…

I’d pay once, if you can afford it. Put conditions on it and swear to him that you will never do it again. And don’t . Get him to the doctor.

Junkies lie. That's what they do. About everything. Been there with son, after TV was ' stolen' in a burglary. He sold it. Of course he did. This is not your son you're dealing with any more. It's a person in the grip of addiction. Tell the police. You'll spend literally decades regretting it if you don't.

I'm prescribed tramadol. 100 tabs per box. I don't always need to take it so after a few months I have several boxes accumulated (hundreds). If I dropped dead and happened to live with family, someone could easily get their hands on hundreds of pills

Just want to agree with those saying this sounds like county lines - it does, sounds like the classic drug debt to manipulate your son into working for them. I've no idea what the best way of tackling it is, sorry you're in such a shit situation.

Your child is also a “sketchy lad”
unlikely he would have lost £1000 worh of oills

Yoir son is a liar, a deal and a user and will continue to be this u less he gets proper help which could also include you telling the police
if you pay of this debt he will continue, he will not learn

I would go straight to the police who even if they don't help will advise on who to contact as they deal with these type of situations on a daily basis. They can connect you with professional support.

my son says that this lad he knows is friends with some scumbag teenagers who would be the type to be involved in hardcore drug dealing/joyriding and might hurt him or our house if we reported it.

And yet you swallowed the story about getting leftover drugs from his sick grandfather. I understand the need to clutch at straws when faced with the cold hard facts that your son is a drug dealer, but come on now OP. Your son is telling you complete fairy tales. Convoluted stories designed to make himself the victim.

The truth is, like many a stupid young lad who sees dollar signs in his eyes and thinks he can try playing at being the big man in a dangerous world, he's got in way out of his depth. There are various possible scenarios for how he ended up owing 850 euros to someone higher up the chain here, but your son's version really isn't one of them.

If this other lad got the drugs because of his grandfather being ill then they cost him nothing and he's owed nothing because he's not out of pocket to his own supplier. If his story were true then your own son could simply threaten to report him for giving him a bulk load of drugs in the first place.

All these 'sketchy' people and 'scumbags' are not a completely separate species from your son, you realise that, don't you? Your son is no less sketchy himself. They are all cut from the same cloth. They are also someone's sons and their parents are probably pulling their hair out and looking for other bad influences to blame for the fact that their own child has become a wrong'un.

He was taking dexamphetamine prescribed by a psychiatrist . Unfortunately for him, he liked the effects and it became gateway drug to other illegal/pharmaceutical drugs.

Highly unlikely that prescribed ADHD meds were a gateway drug for cannabis. More likely that he was already a regular user of cannabis and other drugs and and knowing the street worth of amphetamines he saw the chance to keep himself supplied in cannabis and whatever else he wanted by selling his own prescribed meds. But the value of his amphetimines would be way more than he'd need to feed a weed habit so there is something else going on here.

I can't really advice you on how to handle it from here, but the first thing you need to do is take your head out of your arse and accept that he's lying through his teeth to you.