So much information, I don't know where to begin…
I am starting to suspect that my son's extreme behaviour, distress and growing depression recently is somehow linked to his newish friend.
My son is 17, friend 19. They have connected about a year ago over music making. My son has great talent in mixing and producing, and to my surprise, also rapping and performing. The friend, who I don't know very well, seems to have develop some dependency around my sons skills and 'signed him up' to some group and push him to perform for money. I don’t think my son see any money.
Recent events were extreme. My son runs away, smoke lots of cannabis, skip school, go out every single day till the middle of the night, often not coming home at all. Last time he was missing for 72 hrs. No idea where money for food comes from. He is angry. Simply distress, completely off the rails. And we are too. Distressed and upset to see our son suffering.
The friend, who we have his number, seems to always know where my son is and be in touch with him on a reg basis. Sometime my son stay the night there. He goes there after school. This friend seems to have a lot of patience and food in the fridge for my son…
We called the friend and said we are worried about our son and can he help to send him back home since he seems to have some influence on him.
Next think, we checked our sons Instagram (we have his computer and the account was left open). We see the conversation between the friend and my son and listened to his repeated intense voice messages urging my son to stop running away and stop “destroying” their business. He sounds so patronising, demanding, controlling and putting so much pressure. “Listen to me..” “I’m gonna cut you out..” “I’m not going to let you destroy what I am building”… telling him your parents are chasing me… you only do that, not allowed to do this, you go out only on these days, you smoke weed only on that day… blah blah blah.. maybe 10 messages were he just shouts at him and is barking orders.
That smell bad to me. My son is going through terrible times and even if this friend’s intentions are good, the attitude, voice and words he was using didn’t seem sympathetic at all. It felt as if he is more worried about himself and the "business" than my son's mental health or well being.
He wants my son to go to Bristol (we live in London) in the middle of the week to perform in some Night club at 1 am or so while he has collage the next day! And that has already happened once before, and we were sort of shock he is doing it but could not stop him. Don’t you need an ID to get into night clubs at this time of the day? (My son was 16 when it happened..
As my son’s behaviour deteriorate I’m trying to figure out what is going so wrong here and the links leads to this friend. I also learned from Instagram that the friend has lend him some money and probably getting him drugs and my son owes him £180.. (he knows very well he doesn’t work and any money he has comes from us, and probably from these shows.. now, we stopped the money a while ago when we realised it flys on drugs!)
I am scared how damaging this friendship potentially is. How can I tell if this guy is a narcissist and using my son? And more critically, what do I do to stop it,
and to open my sons eyes to this abusive relationship.
I would be so grateful for any thoughts or leads to help me make sense of this. Thank you for reading.