Thread: Helping an Addicted Loved

Hi,

I have scoured the internet but it is hard to find resources for secondary involvement in a loved one's drug use. I'm not sure what I am evening asking here other than that I really need help or support in some way.

The story is that my boyfriend's Mom is an abuser of Meth (she also has some underlying mental health issues, and it is hard to distinguish her times of being high with her mental health episodes, they probably sometimes occur concurrently). She was placed in a Crisis Intervention Unit about 2 weeks ago after trying to inject herself with Meth, she was kind of successful, and took a bat to her neighbors car say, "it's the car of the people who are spying on me". She now has some injuries on her arm and hand where she improperly injected (refuses to seek medical help). She has been on and withdrawing Meth and/or having episodes over the past 2 weeks. Finally, on Monday my boyfriend could not take anymore of her verbal abuse (screaming how she hates him, calling him names, telling him how I'm a gold digger and he is falling for my manipulation, saying how he will end up a bum paying child support (we do not have kids), and so on and so forth) when she started throwing things around and threatening to kill my cat and called the police to get her removed. I know he feels both enormous guilt and enormous relief to have her gone (causing more guilt). Since he is worried about her health, see improper injection of meth, he has been calling her once a day to make sure that she is still alive (she also threatened suicide and told him that if she did it would be his fault). She even wrote him a two page letter about how he is at fault, that he chose me over her and how he is a terrible son (along with pointing out the people spying on her and causing her pain with laser torture, aka why he should not leave her alone). To be 100% transparent, I do feel that I am indirectly responsible for him deciding to stand up to her (I have been encouraging him to realize his own self worth and that he has the right to be happy and safe and tell her no when it makes him uncomfortable to comply with her requests) and she does really really hate me for a lot of this, hence her thinking I am trying to manipulate him into letting her go. In reality what I want is for him to be happy, for her to be healthy and for them to have a strong and healthy relationship now that he is an adult (29).

What I am really looking for is advice on how to support him through this time where he is realizing all the issues he and his mother have and that he is not responsible for making her "better", especially when she adamantly refuses all help and treatment.

Any thoughts, concerns, etc. would be appreciated. I'm trying to be there for him while being empathetic to his mom and her issues since taking a stance against her would not be helpful, or at least I do not think it is. I have set a pretty strong boundary since the indecent that she is not welcome in what will soon be our shared home but I also don't want to encourage him to write her off or create separation before he is ready.

Sorry for going on and on, I am very concerned and confused and have little experience dealing with this.

Regards,

HouseKat

You have a very difficult situation. I know exactly how you feel because my father also had serious problems with drug addiction. It's very hard to help people like that because they think they don't need help most of the time. But it would help if you never gave up on people like that. You have to support them and try to fight the problem. They are not able to cope by themselves. It is best to get them to see specialists who will give them the right treatment. I recently came across this website https://fherehab.com/location/alcohol-rehab-deerfield, where I learned in detail about rehab for alcoholics. This place can save thousands of lives.