Our DS16 has ADHD and is medicated. He's under excellent care (consultant led) and our GP is great too. He also has an ADHD coach to help him with school work, organisation, revision and basically life. This, he's getting a lot out of (and I can share details - she's so good) and I am too (as the mam of an ADHD boy).
He's a year behind at school and so doing GCSEs this year. He's doing well, but the school can be a little wishy-washy with support for his additional needs (they're reactive, not proactive).
We are an extremely supportive family, he has two sibs and his dad and I are still together. He is a loved boy, and a loving boy - but good god, as my Irish mammy would say, "he's a disaster".
If there is trouble to be found, he will find it. If there's no trouble to be found - he will make it. He's like Mario Ballotelli - why always me?!
He has form for addictive behaviour - gambling, drinking alcohol, vaping, obsession with girls, being online, smoking, snus and cannabis.
This week, after a long time of me saying to him "I know something isn't right, you know it comes out, please tell me now before there's damage" he has finally admitted to more cannabis use (not sure on how habitual yet). He is waking in the night to go outdoors to the end of the garden where no one can see him and sit in a thing we've got there and smoke.
He says it quietens his mind, but (and he has form for this - you're just going to have to trust me that this is a possibility) he may have jut heard that somewhere and is parroting it.
I have lived alongside addiction, serious life-changing addiction, all of my life. Someone very close to me has suffered from it (still is) and from late teens my life has been dominated by their addiction and the chaos that brings. It has ruined their life and I swear I have PTSD from that time, it was absolutely horrific.
I can see this playing out - I am careful not to catastrophise - DS is not my addicted family member. He is his own person - but god, wouldn't it be remiss of me not to recognise the pattern here? He is following in their footsteps nearly to the letter, save for there being no trauma (our parent died young) or none that I know about (and I daresay there IS trauma, but he doesn't know it either). I feel like I'm watching part 2 of an absolutely horrific film I fucking hated first time around but this time the victim is my child (and, also, me - again).
I have got in touch with the local drug advisory service. I've also contacted his child psychotherapist we saw when the gambling was the problem. I will contact his ADHD coach to signpost, and perhaps the consultant (even though each time it's a £275 request). Our friend is a GP, I've asked her too (she said the same drug service, so that's where they point people).
He seems fairly at the end of his tether, which I know they have to be before help really sets in for them - I can't force them well. I learned that after 25 years with my lovely sib. So at least there's that - he needs the gift of desperation and I think he sounds like he's there. However, we've been here before - he says what he knows we want to hear. He steals, he lies (ALL the time, ALL the time). He obfuscates. He gaslights me (so much so I need to make contemporaneous notes on my phone so I can refer back to them when challenged). He takes up all of our resources - all of our emotional and mental strength. Most of the money. Most of the time. All of the worry. He's, like many addicts, so selfish and will get himself in situations where we have to come save him - usually involving a 4 hour round trip at night whilst my DH is away. He is frankly exhausting.
He is also lovely. He's a loving, bright, funny and caring boy. He is so loved - by us, by his sibs, by his friends and by anyone who meets him. He loves animals and babies - he has a heart of gold.
Is there anything else you would do to try and set him right? Or are we destined to travel this road again which makes me want to cry - for him and perhaps selfishly, for me.
Does anyone have any experience?
Thank you for reading.
TCT.