What boundaries to set for my 29 yr old alcoholic son?

Am a mother of four. I also have addictions. I don't need support, I need to make better choices. And I do and have. No one ever "supported" me. It is a personal decision to do without alcohol or drugs. God is the only support you can turn an addicted person on to for support. Addicted people are far beyond needing support. They need God's tough love and loneliness to the point it hurts so bad they either stop or die. Loved ones watching it are the ones who need the support.

Save yourself. He will or will not follow your example. You can't fix him and your fear of losing him, which leads to you giving him a place to escape reality, will not "help" him. You gotta let go. Is hardest thing a mother has to learn.

I know that it’s relatively easy to make judgements on other people’s opinions but I strongly believe in the saying, walk a mile in my shoes, it’s so true. I also had to cope with a loved one’s struggles with alcohol addiction. I don’t think that there’s one set of rules fits all, every situation is different…my partner was a drinker when I met him but the extent of his drinking was slowly becoming a problem. It would take too long to relate all that we went through but I was blessed after many years later when he had enough suffering and he finally quit, he is now clean and sober for 21 years. I know that people used to look down on alcoholics because they didn’t recognize it as an illness like any other addiction or disease, only today I believe that there’s a more compassionate attitude towards alcoholism. It’s truly a heartache to go through this with a loved one and experiences vary greatly from one person to another but the pain is the same for those who live with this illness.

That is great that you and your partner got through this and it has been 21 years. This is a mother asking and as a mother of four, I know kids, I know addictions and what that does. I was not "judging", sorry you interpreted it so.

Having been just such a son; demand he be the man you know he can be tell him how such a man behaves.

If you have examples to point to in your family point them out.

I assume he knows about AA and you’ve suggested counseling.

He can and will heal.

He and only he can choose.

Prepare that he may not now or ever.

The choice must be his. Sometimes it has to get really, really, really bad. Sometimes one never chooses.

Model and show what ferocious other directed love looks like: what is best for him not easiest for us.

He is young and not yet lost. The prognosis is good.

I was far, far, more gone and with my mother’s love and the support of thousands of unnamed people, I’m still here.

Your son will make it.

Take care of yourself you can not pour from an empty cup.

May grace hold you both through the storm.

Alanon is a helpful group meeting and resource. Only the addict can decide to get help when they are ready. Even if they get clean/sober, they need to do the work themselves to stay clean/sober. speaking from my journey, No one could have willed me to go to AA. I needed to want to go. It helps to invite the person, but allow them to make the choice. Speak the truth in love. And be prepared for rejection until they are ready.

My parents put me in rehab (the first time) at 14. After attempts at sobriety over 3 decades, I am sober (as you know as I have said it probably too many times). My mother told me, "As long as you were alive, I had hope." That was powerful to me. My brother, completely stopped talking to me and told my mother to tell me he would not talk to me until I quit using. After I quit 12/16/17, I was working through the steps of AA. I got to steps 6 & 7 and started making amends. My brother told me that he had always waited on the phone call from my parents or my partner (that died from this dis-ease) that I was dead. That was also powerful and really hit me in the soul regarding how my addiction had affected those that cared for me the most. Yes, you must take care of yourself. It is a natural law that if you change, everyone around you changes. That is not to put the responsibility on you regarding anyone else's issue...it is just the way the Universe seems to work.

Honestly I was not referring to you or anyone else, I enjoy reading what others have to say and I also benefit from it. I also have children who went through this with me, they still have scars from their past but they both get therapy and medication to help them heal. I know it’s a heartache and the caregiver is often overlooked, all the attention is directed to the patient, I’m still trying to move forward from my past and I believe it’s a lifelong process, I wish for you healing and peace, amen.

Also researching codependency could help. And knowing this will unfold as it must even if we would to intervene.

Addiction writ large (none worse than our addiction to money the love of which darkens the whole planet) sickens everyone within the orbit and to at least six degrees of separation, essentially all of humanity. Heal it we must and will.

Love your neighbor ( that includes the ones we didn’t select) as we love ourselves; ferociously without end and watch the healing begin.

If everyone on this board does so we’ll heal the whole world in a year or two.

Start at home and don’t stop.

Loving another or many others, is the “why” behind the “how” we must endure.

It has sustained me through many dark hours evidenced by my posts.

Love someone or something enough and one can not be defeated.

They thought they’d finished me. They didn’t know how ferocious my mother is.

Now I’m still here and I love my children, all children, with same ferocity fueled by love and the suffering I have endured.

It is my secret weapon.

Let it be so for you as well.

Dig deep enough into grief and see it reborn as love filling the same space one and the same.

The only risk is I sometimes want to be consumed by its embrace. Then my children whisper “daddy you promised”

That’s my purpose.