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

Posted by lisaav @lisaav, May 21 12:02am

My son lives at his gf's house Sun to Fri. She enables his drinking. She does not really drink. She has 2 kids. He stays at my house on Fri and Sat nights. I don't allow the drinking. He has snuck it in. He also has had seizures from withdrawl at my house since I don't let him drink. Ended up in the ER. His siblings will no longer talk to him until he gets sober. He's not invited to family get togethers. I don't give him money. I don't buy very much for him. He is not abusive to me. (Except for the constant worry). I feel if I give him tough love and cut ties with him, his gf will only continue to enable him. He may die and I will have not spent time with him. I'm just not sure how to move forward.

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frouke | @frouke | 5 days ago
In reply to @dfb "Addiction writ large (none worse than our addiction to money the love of which darkens the..." + (show)
@dfb

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.

Jump to this post

I find you very wise and I don’t say that often, sometimes I wonder why God lets us suffer and I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way… when I read your post it was filled with so much pain but you turned it around and it became your wisdom and inevitably your strength, God does work in strange ways sometimes.

REPLY
dfb | @dfb | 5 days ago

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor who developed logotherapy to my mind his philosophy that one must make meaning from suffering is grace itself.

Like Sisyphus…my “why” makes my “how” tolerable.

For me that is my promise to my children…that is my why and it exceeds all how’s.

Find your why.

For me it is always other directed.

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merrick7 | @merrick7 | 5 days ago

First of all I’m so so sorry you’re going through this. I was 18 and my boyfriend was addicted to drugs and his mother and I were in your exact position. We couldn’t sleep we were always up waiting for him to come home. Sickening feeling. BUT eventually, he was told he was not allowed back. He then went down the block to an old time friend and his family, which only put up with him for a couple weeks until the mother felt like us! Long story short, but no one would give him anything anymore. Everyone stopped! So he moved out of state. Got help from his father but eventually got in a lot of trouble. But the end of the story is he FINALLY hit rock bottom! Got help and hasn’t done drugs anymore. There’s hope, I promise. But you have to be tough. My mom tried to help him and cashed a check for him even though I told her not to, it was a bad check and with the $ my mom gave him he overdosed that night. He ended up in the hospital for the night. So the longer you enable him the more miserable situations you will witness.
I really hope this helps 🙂

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