Our 15 year old DS has ADHD and mild ASD. He has always suffered from anxiety and tended towards depression with some bad mental health patches along the way. Until very recently he was kind of a loner- had a few friends here and there but they were always slightly random and never deep connections and used to spend all his weekends home alone. He started high school this year (we live abroad) and had a rough transition- the few friends that he had fell off, he was pretty isolated and was struggling with the academics (he's bright but his adhd means he easily loses focus) and his mental health was in a really rough place. He was also angry and irritable most of the time, mean to his brothers and hard to be around.
Fast forward to right before the christmas holidays when everything started to fall into place for him. He made a new friend- a really lovely kid and for teh first time it feels like a proper friendship- they talk about stuff, go places together etc etc. We were thrilled. This friend also has a whole ready made friend group from his previous school and so DS became friends with them. They seem like lovely kids- they are all involved in lots of school activities/ are active and engaged, have get togethers and sleepovers and lots of nice wholesome things and now DS has plans every weekend and seems much happier and more pleasant to be around .
The only problem is that he seems to be sliding into way more teenage type behaviors. These friends take edibles (weed gummies) regularly on nights out, which scares me as his brain is obviously still developing. He also developed a plan to take magic mushrooms with another kid, but we found out and stopped it. And then I found some alcohol stashed under his bed and read his text messages to see what is going on, and it looks like he and one of the other guys from the friend group (not hte main school friend) shoplifted it??!!. I am so shocked and disappointed in him and feel this is a major major breach of trust. Any suggestions on how to handle it? he will be extremely angry that we were snooping/ looking at his messages, but I feel that he has not earned the right to that level of privacy? At the same time, i don't want to cut him off from these friends completely as they genuinely are nice kids and it's hte first time i 've seen him have real friends adn be happy. It's strange because the shoplifting/ weed kid also seems lovely and like a basically good kid? What should we do/ how should we handle this?