My son has always had problems with his behaviour, getting into trouble at school etc and he has smoked both weed and weed since he started secondary school. Of course we tried everything to stop him but it didn't work so eventually we settled for as long as he doesn't do it in the house and we know what he doing then that was better than nothing.
When he was about 14 he became friends with someone new, a guy at school. Suddenly his smoking became a lot heavier and he pulled away from us more. I then found a bag of drugs in his room, he told me they weren't his and they were storing him for that friend as his dog could smell them. I went over to talk to the mother of the boy and she said she wasn't surprised but there was nothing she could do, her and her daughter were petrified of this boy - he robbed the family home when he was 14.
A few months of trying to get my son to keep his distance from this guy and I found another, larger bag of drugs in his room. He said he was storing them for a friend and receiving a small amount of money for it. I went with my son to visit family outside of england to try to get him away from the situation.
This worked and for a long time he calmed down, got a new job, still smoked weed but only roughly once a week and I didn't hear of this friend anymore.
Last year the friend came back into his life, and my son's behaviour started to get worrying again. He started drinking alone in his room and smoking weed alone all the time. Tensions in the house ran very high for a while and he has recently moved out to a family member's.
Recently we had a family function, at which my son was present. It became clear that he had moved onto harder drugs and now takes cocaine. We heard from one of his close friends that he takes this regularly now, sometimes even in the afternoon and apparently people have noticed that his short term memory is awful, with him repeating a conversation 2 minutes after he has already had it.
I am worried he is on a road to nowhere but do not know how best to handle the situation, he needs help but how do I do this without risking pushing him further away?