Adult son with weed addiction

[MummyPop00]

I have a son with a long standing weed habit. He's now 31. He's been smoking since he was around 18.

In retrospect, I possibly helped with the groundwork for his habit as when he was 17 & in college he was forever around an older 19 year old friend’s flat so I had the genius idea to use his father’s maintenance to enable him to move in with his older friend whilst allowing him to pay his way & hopefully help him learn some independence skills in the process.

I won’t lie, I also did this because I also had two other children, a one year old & a newborn at the time with my second husband. A 17 year old swanning in & out of the house at unsocial hours wasn’t exactly compatible with the overall needs of the household at the time & my 17 year old seemed more than happy with the arrangement to move in with his older friend at the time, so a win win (though he has used this as a stick to beat me with since)

Anyhow, not long after that we got him a council flat & he had a nice little set up which we helped him with & he was holding down a decent job, so all was seemingly good apart from the fact he had started smoking weed regularly by this time. But he was otherwise functioning, holding down employment & all else was seemingly ok.

When he was 22, he gave this flat up to move in with his girlfriend in a house that was owned & let by his girlfriend's parents. Bad move in our opinion & we warned him as he had no security of tenure at the new house. But he ignored us & moved in with her anyway.

So that relationship ends 3 years later due to her wanting kids & him not wanting kids & he lands back on our doorstep without prior warning. We ourselves were in a state of flux at this time because we had not long moved ourselves, our house was still only half decorated , no floor coverings down, we didn't really have the room to reaccommodate him as our two younger ones were 8 & 9 by this time, with the 9 year old also having been diagnosed with ASD.

Anyhow, after deep sighs, we rapidly came to an agreement with him that he was to hand over £500 a month out of his wages, which we would hold onto over 6 months, giving him £3000 to use as a deposit for a new apartment rental to get him back on his feet ASAP

Anyway he immediately decided to book a holiday to Amsterdam with his new girlfriend before handing over a single penny to us, so we hit the roof.

We gave him 30 days notice to move out. He moved out immediatelv after returning from Amsterdam because we were so furious with him & ‘he didn’t want to live in that atmosphere’.

Since then he has continued smoking weed, blaming other people (& mainly us) for his problems, not saving any money, ending up with debts & on one recent subsequent occasion when he was looking after our now 13 year old daughter whilst he had also been smoking weed during the day, she had a problem with her teeth braces he offered to drive her into town whilst high to sort the issue out. We had to return home as fortunately we were only 20 miles away having a two night break.

We have decided not to use him for further babysitting after that as he is clearly not a responsible adult.

Anyhow, he has had another council flat now for the last two & a half years which remains undecorated because of lack of motivation though he is still holding down a job. I have been paying him £40 per week over the last year as a final chance to get back on his feet & help eradicate his debts & sort his flat out on the proviso he seeks help for mental health problems & gives up weed.

A year later he has sought help for his mental health issues via Andy’s Man Club, but he is still smoking weed. Because he has drove whilst high, he thinks it’s ok because he has done it lots of times without crashing his car & ‘everyone he knows does it’. He has also drunk driven on at least one occasion.

I will be stopping the £40 as I don’t want to be enabling this, and I’m thinking of going no contact with him until he finds the resolve to somehow sort him self out.

Can’t seem to get through to him but also feel as though I’m partly responsible. But on the other hand, he is 31 years of age now?

Don’t know what I’m asking here except has anybody dealt with similar & if so, any words of advice? :(

Gosh there is a lot going on there , you are right to be stopping the £40 a week he is a working adult . Does he actually want to stop smoking weed ?

Hi

I’m really not convinced he does want to stop, though I accept it probably isn’t easy for him. He has even recently suggested Cannabis might help his younger brother who has ASD. Sounds like he is down the rabbit hole of extolling the virtues of weed to me.

My husband is more staunch, as he used to be a heavy drinker himself, but stopped overnight with a click of his fingers 14 years ago, so he has less patience with my older son & his weed habit these days than I have.

To be fair to him, my son has been to the GP, who prescribed antidepressants but here he is, still smoking weed :(

It’s all so depressing.

While I agree that maybe moving him out so early wasn’t the best move (even though I completely get why, I was looking forward to DD going to uni for the same reasons, I find her schedules very very disruptive and stressful), that in itself isn’t the cause so please don’t beat yourself up about it. I moved out to study as soon as I turned 16 and I never ended up drinking or using any drugs, including weed, so it really depends on the person.

DD is still young but I have the same issue: I suspect the regular weed use makes them more prone to depression and procrastination, but weed has been so normalised that no smoker will admit to this. I’ve had multiple arguments about this and it’s starting to really reach a boiling point, but I don’t want her to move out due to a fight, I want her to grow up.

He has to want to change and tbh from your post that is not evident.
I feel very strongly about weed as my eldest son developed psychosis due to smoking it and ended up sectioned for a long time (as a teenager) It’s my one non negotiable.
I don’t agree with your son spending time with your other children- particularly other DS. He is going to be vulnerable to the virtues of weed.
I wouldn’t go no contact but maybe low. No money and only practical help. Come and decorate etc. You know the money you are giving him is going and it smacks that you feel guilty about something. He needs to grow up. I had three children by his age.
Nothing about your post says he wants to stop (sorry) and I am sympathetic. I have just seen the damage it does.

Thanks for the responses.

Yes he is very good at pulling the guilt trip levers.

‘You kicked me out when I was 17’ (We didn’t really, it was a mutually agreed arrangement)

’You kicked me out when I split up with my girlfriend’ (Well, we warned you that you didn’t have security of tenure at her house & you also didn’t give us any money to save as per our agreement before you trotted off to Amsterdam)

These are probably the only reasons I have been paying him £40 a week over the last year to be honest.

As regards practical help, I went through phases of cleaning his first flat on a fairly frequent basis when he hardly lifted a finger himself (that flat was nearer to our home)

It’s hard to contemplate going around to his latest flat (which is a few miles away) mothering a 31 year old who goes out to work then probably spends the rest of his evening glued to his couch with a spliff watching UFC for the rest of the night instead of spending the evenings or weekends decorating & sorting his flat out.

It’s infuriating in fact!