Deeply ashamed of my son

[Iluvgenehunt]

My family, daughter, son in law, granddaughter, son and son's girlfriend attended a family wedding today. My 32 year old son has a history of drug addiction and alcohol abuse. I thought that the habitual weed smoking was finally behind him but it seems not. He got so drunk that even before the meal had been served, he was extremely drunk. He and his girlfriend left the table. I later discover his beautiful girlfriend crying outside and son was meandering all over the grounds outside the hotel arguing with anyone who would listen about politics. Girlfriend then tells me that he is back buying bitcoin in order to get weed vapes from America. He is broke and now owes her money. He has also been on Tinder and has been messaging women, looking at porn and talking to his ex girlfriends trying to get sympathy. I have urged girlfriend to leave him (together for three years) because he doesn't love her. He is addicted to weed, alcohol, porn and lying. He can barely hold down a job. My ex husband has washed his hands of him even though he is also an alcoholic who was emotionally abusive to me for years and had been having an affair with someone he works with for quite some time before we divorced. I suspected this but didn't know it for sure until today.
I am humiliated and furious and sick to my stomach about my son. I need to detach myself from him. He will threaten suicide and try to get money out of me. I have to tolerate him in my house tonight but would it be unreasonable if me to cut all contact.....at least temporarily and maybe for good?
My mother became an alcoholic in her 70s so I have been surrounded by addicts for over half my life.

Sometimes there is no reason. My son was an alcoholic and never saw his father being abusive to me or anyone else. He was an ordinary happy boy until he hit 14. I'm still looking for answers as to why. I guess I'll never know.

The idiots on this thread thinking you should stop addicts from experiencing the down side their addiction will be the mothers on here in years to come wondering why their kids are in jail/addicts/smacking their partner around. Nobody stops their substance abuse because you loved them all the more for it. It’s because they’ve hit the tarmac so fucking hard the only way they can go is up. This virtue signalling nonsense is why the country is on its knees with decent people suffering at the hands of absolute monsters who’ve never felt consequences hard enough to CHANGE THE PATTERN OF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOUR. My aunt had 5 kids she refused to let rock bottom when they were on smack. She is 64 and has to date buried FOUR OF THEM. You people help nobody.
OP you’re doing the right thing. He needs to know the only way he gets a life worth living is by changing his behaviour.

Hi, I haven’t read the thread, but can you help him get into rehab? Tell him he’s in danger of losing everything, including his life. He sounds as if he’s in a bad way, but there is treatment for addiction. And it sounds as if he desperately needs that treatment.

I was married to what they call a “dry drunk”. He got sober but did it on his own, so the issues remained. People with addiction are exceedingly hard to be around and peace is not very likely if you remain close to them. But maybe you could help from a distance and have a look at what the options are for rehab, if he would go to it.

Your son sounds like he has turned out that way due to a mix of genetics and environment.

His Father was his model of what a man is. He speaks to his girlfriend that way as it’s what he saw at home. You perhaps had experience of normal life before his Father, but these deeply abnormal experiences were his life that he grew up in.

It’s bloody rubbish of his Dad to cut contact when basically he created his son by what he taught him about what a man is.

There is nearly always a reason a bad un has turned out this way. And thats the reason for your son. It was the family he grew up in. His Father, and to a lesser extent you OP, have responsibility for that. If you want him to take responsibility to sort himself out, you and his Father have to as well. Not that I suppose his Father will.

As pp said, I would not cut him off but set boundaries.

I think you need to severely restrict contact with DS. I wouldn’t involve myself further in his relationship though.

YANBU at all.
I would make every effort to help his girlfriend break away from your son - her life will be miserable and I think you owe her that - whatever it takes.
Hard as it must be, yes cut ties with your son - you know from experience how this goes. You deserve to be happy.

I would cut him off from social events too. I’d speak to him if he rang me but end it if he started asking for money. It’s down to the girlfriend if she wants to leave him or not, she is an adult.

You said it yourself, OP, you have spent half your life surrounded by addicts. They do say that our environment shapes our lives. Please don’t let it shape yours. Cut off contact. Let his girlfriend know you are always there for her, and let him know that he is the one causing this.

The OP said to this woman what anyone on here would tell her.

The fact he is her son doesn’t mean she has to support him and take his side on any and all situations.

Because she understands that other people don’t exist for the sole purpose of making her son’s life easier? It’s always very encouraging to see someone who’s broken free of the idea that women should set themselves on fire to keep men warm posting on MN. This site has more than its fair share of handmaidens, in my limited experience. The fact that OP can still see all this when the man concerned is a son she clearly loves is all the more to her credit. He won’t change while he’s being sheltered from the perfectly logical consequences of his actions. And he needs to change if he wants his life to not be difficult.

Whats your going through is spiritual others may laugh. I couldnt careless tbh this is generational the alcoholism and am not saying no more on here.
Your son is addicted and that power has to be broken.

Honestly OP if only other parents did the same as you. Addicts and alcoholics will scorch everything and everyone as you know all too well. You’re not being unreasonable to cut ties with him and you’re certainly not being unreasonable to try and convince his gf to move on too. Protect yourself first and foremost and just hope he finds a way out of his mess himself.

For your wellbeing you should cut all unecessary contact and dont invite him to any family occasion when he is likely to behave like this.

This is all about you? How your mum treated you, how your ex treated you, how you’re embarrassed.

Your son is an addict and can’t help himself!

He’s already been abandoned by his dad.

So you, his mum will abandon him as well.

He needs help!

So you think - can’t be bothered, let him loose on the community to terrorise them. Wash your hands of him.

I absolutely hate selfish behavior. What went wrong in his life for him to result to drink & drugs? because he must have suffered some trauma to get into this. Happy normal adjusted people don’t go on regular drink and drugs benders.

Incidentally, why are you encouraging his girlfriend to leave him?! She’s probably the only person keeping him alive and she wouldn’t stick with him unless she thought something was there. Incidentally, she probably won’t stick around anyway, once all her friends tell her to leave.

You do realise that addicts who threaten suicide eventually do carry out their suicide.

I doubt your next post on MN will be my son was found dead in his flat today, I prayed for him to die and it was a sigh of relief I didn’t have to deal with his drama.

You birthed him, you owe him to get him on an addiction programme via his GP or at least understand and forgive his behaviour which he has no control over. You think he wants to be like this? He hates himself and is powerless to stop his addictions. The devil took over his mind and body and will soon have dying young. You need to read up about addiction.

Also, give him some structure in his life like going to the gym everyday, a dog to walk or care for, something that fills his day, gives him something to do. Because the devil makes work for idle minds.

Also, you should be an advocate of seeing the curse of drug dealing. All too often no-one gives a stuff about drug dealing or thinks it’s harmless weed until they see it with their own eyes in their own families. People start off with weed and move to harder drugs, then a family witnesses the destruction and early death of a family member, gone before their time.

at no point should drugs be legalised. All it does is lead to more drug dealing.

’m so sorry you’ve had to go through all of this, especially at a family wedding where you should have been able to enjoy yourself. I don’t think you’re unreasonable for feeling that you’ve reached your limit.
Your son is responsible for his behaviour and, at 32, ultimately has to take responsibility for getting help. But I also think it’s important to remember that he didn’t necessarily become this way in a vacuum. Growing up with an alcoholic and emotionally abusive father may well have damaged him and contributed to the patterns he has developed. That doesn’t excuse what he is doing, but it might explain some of it. You can have compassion for the reasons behind his behaviour without continuing to enable it.
I would be very careful about making a permanent decision while you’re understandably devastated and furious. A period of no contact or very limited contact could be completely reasonable and might actually be healthier for both of you. You could simply tell him that you love him, but you cannot continue to be involved while he is drinking, using drugs, lying, borrowing money or behaving abusively, and that you need some distance.
Please don’t give him money to solve the consequences of his addiction. Paying debts, replacing money or repeatedly rescuing him may relieve the immediate crisis but can keep the cycle going. His girlfriend also needs to make her own decision about whether to stay, and you can support her without becoming responsible for rescuing either of them.
And if he threatens suicide, please don’t allow that threat to become a way of controlling you. Take every genuine threat seriously, but don’t personally take responsibility for keeping him alive. If you believe he is in immediate danger, contact emergency services or a crisis service and let professionals deal with it. You don’t have to give him money or abandon your boundaries because he says he will harm himself.
Most importantly, please look after yourself. You have spent years living around addiction, and it sounds as though this has brought a lifetime of pain to the surface. You are allowed to step away. You are allowed to say, “I love you, but I cannot live like this anymore.” Detaching isn’t abandoning him — sometimes it is the only way to stop an addiction from consuming the whole family.
You haven’t failed your son. You cannot love someone out of an addiction, and you cannot make someone choose recovery. ❤️

There is so much wrong with this that I’m not even going to bother with most of it, except to say: OP, in the name of the wee man, do not get or encourage your son to get a dog while he’s in this state. It is utterly illogical to claim that he can’t take care of himself in one breath while recommending he be given the care of an animal in the next.

I don't think it's mean at all. I have done the same and completely understand.

She's presumably known the gf for a while as the gf and ds have been together 3 years, and she probably feels at the very least like you would about a friend, neighbour, work colleague of that time but probably feels more like the gf is part of the family.

Added to that op can see her son treating the gf the same as she was treated.
Who would want to convince someone to stay in a relationship like that?

There is often a genetic element to addiction. You were right to tell his gf to dump him. If she lends him money it is making him worse and she'll never get it back. It's not until he hits rock bottom that he will start to improve. You don't have to let him stay at your house. He's an adult now and is making bad choices. Don't aid him in any wY exceptsybe give him food occasionally.

The selfish behaviour is from an out of control addict who cannot be helped. Once you give them an inch they take a mile, not cutting ties would mean his dark cloud will always linger over OP who knows all too well alcoholics and addicts cannot be helped- only they can help themselves and they’ve got to want it. They’re like a big black hole that suck in everything around them.

OP keep him cut off.

What in his behaviour makes you think he loves his girlfriend?

He sounds a bit like the main guy in ‘one day’ have you seen or watched that? Well done for telling the gf to leave, loving an addict boyfriend is no life for her.

What an abhorrent post.

Would you say that if it was your daughter? Women are not emotional support pets for men.

If she stays we know what could happen next. A pregnancy and a baby that op will most likely have to help parent and the cycle begins again...

If you are going to do anything you should be very clear that this is why you divorced his father, he is repeating patterns even after you tried to break the cycle. Really tell him about the abuse, how it affected you and him and anyone else around it. It sadly does feel he is copying what he sees as male behaviour but it needs to be bought into the light if you want to fight it. He might not quite see how his childhood affected him, or might want to go through why you divorced. Often these things are brushed under the rug and kids are left to make their own assumptions as no adults are honest with them, other than saying "it isn't your fault". Talking through why you left and not wanting the family to repeat these mistakes is something more families need to do - showing progression and ending cycles is what we should aim for when there has been trauma.
Good luck, you sound lovely.

He needs to make an appointment with a psychiatrist immediately.