Needs a title

Tags

bipolar, depression, drug addict, drug addiction, drug counselling, drug treatment, halfway house

Yesterday was a bad day for me.

I wasn’t feeling it to start with.  I had an appointment with one of my orthopedic doctors to check my wrist and elbow.  (I don’t have to wear the brace anymore, but I’m still not allowed to lift anything with my right hand).  After that I had to run to the wholesale butchers.  This place is huge.  I’ve never seen so much meat in one place.  Usually, I love to go there.  Buying expensive food for cheap with extremely good quality is something that usually makes me very happy.

But, the events of earlier in the day had me down.

Like I said, I wasn’t feeling it even when I got up.  So I was already pushing really hard to get myself moving at all.

Then hubby tells me that he got a call about going to PA to attend one of J’s family counseling appointments.  And J said specifically that he did not want me there.

Daggers to the heart.

Why? What had I done wrong? Sure, I got in a fight with the mother but that was a year and a half ago.  If anyone was pissed about that anymore I surely would have heard about it before now.

J was saying he didn’t want to come South to live with us…because of me.

This bit of news sent hubby to the edge for two reasons.  One, he was hurt by J’s unwillingness to have me around and two he was afraid it would start some sort of episode for me.

It turns out that when J lived with us a couple years ago, I had given him money and told him not to tell his father.  Finances were tight and I often didn’t tell hubby the particulars because he was stressed enough about his low paychecks.  Apparently, J is now interpreting this as me asking him to lie to his father.  Ok, I see what he’s saying, but hubby and I are still pretty dumbfounded.  Not three weeks ago, J spun such a doozy lie to his father, unprompted by me I might add, about his drug use.  And we’ve caught him in lies all over the place in the last few years.  Even while he was living here with us.

So, what this tells me, is that he’s looking for excuses to not move here. So, we are going to try to find a halfway house in PA for him to move into. This way, he will have to work, he will have to stay clean, but he will be able to see his mother, sister, brother and nephew on occasion.

Having him in that sort of situation is probably the best thing for him.  It will help him to transition to an adult life, which should have happened years ago.  But, the mother couldn’t allow her “babies” to stretch their wings and fly.  My therapist called it “spousifying”.  Gross.

So, I ended up getting nothing accomplished at all yesterday.  We didn’t find out the real reason for my exclusion until around 6 in the evening and I had already taken to the bed from sadness.

So, goal for today is to get some crap done around here.  I hate to say it, but there is a slight life in my mood knowing that J may not move down here.  I would take him in a heartbeat if that’s what happens, but not having me move in removes a HUGE pile of stress from everyone.

Time to fold that laundry that’s been languishing in the dryer for the last two days.

 

Grateful…Rage…Sorrow

Tags

addiction, drug addict, drug addiction, drug rehab, gratefulness, rage, rehab, sorrow

First, for Gratefulness 

Hubby was able to get J to agree to go to rehab yesterday.

J had said in the past that he was willing to go, but he was always saying “I’ll go tomorrow”.  That was the case yesterday when hubby went to get him.  He wanted to wait to party tonight and get his paycheck tomorrow. Of course that would lead to a paycheck fueled heroin bender.  Hubby was able to help him see that the next high could be the one that kills him, and also that the people he was going to hang out with tonight would be happy that he was getting help if they really cared about him.

So, hubby and (step-daughter) A took him to the facility that I found and were able to get him the last available bed, which I had put a temporary hold on, by telling them that he was on his way.  I couldn’t be more grateful that he got that last bed.

After getting him admitted, hubby had to go buy him new clothes.  The jeans that J owns are way too big on his drug emaciated body.  And, of course, no belts or drawstrings allowed in rehab.  So, new jeans, sweatpants, t-shirts, sweatshirts, underwear, socks.  Thank God for places like Forman Mills where those things can be picked up cheap.  And, again, I’m grateful that we happened to have a little extra money from Christmas, that we were able to fund this.

Now, for the RAGE.  The mother.

Hubby and A, with grandson in tow, arrived at the house that J and K share with their mother at 11:30 in the morning and everyone was still asleep except the mother, who had just woken up.  The house looked like a crack den.  Dirty dishes piled up in the sink.  Razor blades, pot bowls and bongs and various other drug paraphernalia littered the coffee table in the living room along with more dirty dishes and trash.  The house reeked of cat piss and shit. The litter boxes looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. Stacks of mail.  Upstairs in J’s room, dirty laundry was everywhere.  And, since the litter boxes were full, the cats had used the piles of dirty laundry to take care of business.

I’m getting upset again just thinking about it.

Now, I’m not trying to say that the kid isn’t responsible for his own actions, he is.  But, he’s also a drug addict and housekeeping isn’t exactly on his list of shit to do.  I don’t know what role K has played in the lack of housekeeping.  Personally, I can easily see him getting fed up and just quitting trying to keep anything clean, except his own room.

But, where the fuck is mother during all this?  J is getting more and more in trouble with drugs.  How does she let everything get this out of control? Because she doesn’t give one shit about anything except getting the kids to pay their share of the rent.  Period.  She buys junk food, cigarettes and prepared meals from the local convenience store (I’d pay big money for a Wawa coffee right now) which are so expensive.  The house has cable boxes in every room which really boosts the cost of cable TV.  She doesn’t work.  She spends more then she has on a consistent basis and then ,…SHE HITS HER KIDS UP FOR MONEY.  Seriously, I shit you not.

Deep breath.

The mother was actually wanting to wait until J got his paycheck for him to go to rehab because she was broke and needed his check.

Seriously.

Think about that for a minute.  She didn’t want her seriously drug addicted son to go to rehab until she got her paws on his next paycheck.

Then…she doesn’t go with them to admit him to the rehab.  She went back to bed.  Hubby really didn’t want her to go because, since she is an attention seeking bitch, she would make a huge scene wailing for son. But, we know she’s mostly sad because of the paycheck.  She didn’t even offer to watch grandson, so they had to drag an energetic 4 year old to the rehab facility with them.

Awesome.  That went well.

Obviously, I wouldn’t want A to leave him at that house, not that she would, but the mother often babysits at A’s house.   But, that couldn’t happen yesterday, because the mother was so upset (about the paycheck probably).  Her own feelings have always come before the needs of her children.  She’s only helpful when she perceives that it will somehow benefit her.

And, now the Sorrow.

We have to leave K in that hellhole with that piece of shit, selfish mother. And now that his brother is in rehab and no longer bringing in any money, we are sure that the mother is going to increase K’s responsibility.  And we can’t do anything to help him.  And J will not be going back there.  First, because we have to get him away from the people, places and things that are triggers to his drug use.  But also because the mother doesn’t want him back.  Too difficult to deal with.  (rage is seeping back in)  J is going to need a primary doctor, a therapist and strict attendance at NA meetings and she will not help him make that happen.  Because he will need help. Again, yes, the responsibility is his, but he is going to need a helping hand.

The only bright spot here is that the mother is talking about wanting to move to Maryland to her father’s house, which would leave K able to move in with A and save some money to get out on his own.  But, I don’t believe she will actually do it.  After all, she’s been saying for 10 years that her doctors say she only has 6 months to live and she still hasn’t bothered to die.  Liar or luckiest person alive?  My money is on liar.  Attention seeking bitch.

I never believed that it was possible for a step-mother (me) to love a child more than his biological parent.  That bond is something that everyone tells me I can’t understand because I don’t have children of my own.  But, I know that I love these kids more than their mother does.  My focus is on helping them be the best them that they can be.  Her focus is on what they can do for her.

If you’ve stuck with this rant this long, I thank you.  If you haven’t, well, I don’t blame you.  Such a mess.

Out of my depth

Tags

addict, addiction, detox, drug addict, drug treatment, heroin, marijuana, personal responsibility, pot, responsibility

My stepson is a drug addict.  And I don’t really know what to do.

Hubby and I are generally in the dark about what happens with his boys.  We ask and ask and ask and are always told that everything is fine.

Until it’s very very very unfine.

Then we get panicky angry phone calls telling us that we must fix whatever the problem is, and we must do it now.  Often, this is the first we are even hearing about the problem.  This has been going on for as long as I’ve known my hubby.  Every week, child support would be dropped off to the mother in cash.  The mother is a lazy lazy woman.  She has a lot of physical health issues, but she has become an expert at playing the victim. She has been telling us that she only has 6 months to live for the last 7 years.  Which makes her the luckiest person on earth or a fantastically huge liar…don’t really know which, but I have my suspicions.

Because the kids lived with her growing up, the boys have caught this “my life is hard, so everything should be provided to me” attitude.  The daughter got pregnant early, which was actually the best thing that could have happened to her.  Expecting a child whipped her ass into shape nearly immediately, as she realized she would have to care for a support a child.

But the boys…well, not so much.  They are 26 and 21 and have no sense of responsibility.  They finally both got steady jobs about 6 months ago and we thought that things were finally on an upswing for them.

On our last visit we realized how wrong we were.

My oldest stepson “J” looked like a drug addict.  Terribly skinny, bad skin and an awful hollow look.  We tried to give him a lot of positive reinforcement regarding his job.  How proud we were of him.  How having this job will eventually provide him with benefits and opportunity for advancement.  How great it was that he was being so responsible.

A week ago the mother called hubby screaming that J doesn’t pay his rent (mother, J, and youngest stepson “K” all live together).  Again, an issue has been allowed to get so bad that all anyone can do is scream and demand that we “fix” it.  A conversation with J led us to believe that the mother is definitely living outside her means and that’s why she’s flipping out so badly, as he’s only $50 behind.  Hubby asked about the drugs and J told him that he smoked pot to keep himself from doing the harder stuff but he was working on stopping everything and working hard at his job.  We knew everything was far from perfect, but we hoped we were being told the truth by J and that he was, indeed, trying.

Until yesterday afternoon.

My stepdaughter “A” texted to ask if hubby was working.  He was, and I asked if she was ok.

Let me take a moment here to lament texting.  Pick up the fucking phone when something horrible is happening.  Seriously.  Talk to me.  It’s faster and easier and gets the process of dealing with whatever is happening moving much much faster.

ANYway…A texted that J has hit rock bottom and she has been trying to find a rehab to take him, but since he has no insurance, no one would take him.  I suppressed the urge to get pissed off that he STILL had not applied for medical assistance and that the mother’s insistence that she was helping him take care of it was obviously, at this point, a steaming pile of crap.

So, I called A to try to figure out what the hell is going on.  And I find out that J has been pawning the mother’s jewelry for drug money.  He sold his cell phone for drug money.  He uses his paychecks for drug money and pays no rent.  The straw that broke the camel’s back (meaning we were finally called in) was that J took K’s TV and the mother’s TV and was on his way to pawn them when he ran out of gas.  This is the only reason he was caught as A’s husband had to go get him.

She tells me that he is completely addicted to heroin.  He wants nothing else.  Although he is supposedly agreeable to going to treatment, but not interested in participating in figuring out how that’s going to happen.  A tells me that she’s been looking for rehabs for him for a couple weeks.

I tell her to let me see what I can do, and I’ll call her back.  Within 10 minutes, I have found a facility that will take him as an inpatient for detox and treatment using county funds while they help him apply for medical assistance.  10 minutes.  It took me 10 fucking minutes.  Yes, I have an advantage because I do know the sort of questions that need to be asked, but if someone had called me weeks ago, J would be almost done his treatment by now, not bottoming out.

Hubby got home from work at 1:00am this morning and I woke up when he came to bed.  I told him everything that had happened and what I had done to try to deal with it.  He’s appreciative of my efforts, pissed at the mother, and desperately worried about J.

I slept like shit, I’m so worried and anxious.  I’m walking around through an ambien hangover, because I didn’t get anywhere near enough sleep to allow it to process through my system.

It’s 6:40 now.  A is going to try to have J at the facility I found at 8 am this morning to try to get him admitted.  I’m praying that they have an available bed for him.

I’m at a loss.  We are 600 miles away.  The mother hates me (looong story) and cannot set it aside to deal with problems with the kids.  I think hubby is going to have to make the trip up there, but it’s going to depend on whether they can get him into treatment and then whether he is allowed visitors.  I would think that they may not during the first phase of treatment.

Hubby did say, and I conveyed to A via text (it was 1:30 am) that if J is unable to get into treatment, the mother is going to need to call the police regarding the stealing and force treatment in jail.  But, the mother never ever follows through.  Ever.  She just gives up because it’s too hard, even though we tell her over and over and over and over that we will help her.

I don’t know what this day is going to bring.  I hope that J agrees to go to treatment.  I hope that the treatment center has a bed for him.  I hope that if that doesn’t happen that the mother does call the police and have him arrested.  Sometimes jail is a good thing if it gets the person the help that they so desperately need.

This is one of those days where I’m lucky enough to have a therapy appointment during a crisis.

I’m taking all advice.  I’ve done everything that I know to do and if I should be doing something else, please tell me.