Effort

Today my son has two appointments. First one was at 10 am this morning and another at 1 pm.



This morning when I awoke at 8 am my son was still up from the night before. As usual when I came down to start breakfast he headed upstairs. "Don't go to sleep now" I shout up to him, "you have to leave for your appointment in an hour and a half".  "I wont", replies, "I am only going to have a little power snooze". When I go upstairs later at 9:15 he is on his computer. I tell him that he will need to leave at 9:30 to catch the bus to get to his appointment on time. 9:30 I noticed his door is completely closed. I speak to him through his closed door. What is he doing? He needs to leave. He is in bed!!!! How can he do this? What sort of self defeating behaviour is this?


Words are exchanged. The end result is that at 9:50 he was telling me there is no point now. I cave in and do what I am not suppose to do. I tell him I will drive him to his appointment so he can go and be a little late, rather than not go at all. I have allowed him to wrap me around his little finger. I have taken some of the responsibility away from him. I want to be supportive, but is letting him make his mistake and get deeper and deeper into his dysfunction the route that I should be taking instead?



On the way there my son says to me, "I don't like this. This is too much effort. I do not want to do this. The way things were when I was just doing my drugs every day was much better and they should go back to that and forget all this". I could only think to reply, "Well if that is the path you want to take then you will not be doing it in my home". He says, "No, I want to do the drugs, but not be homeless".

Too much effort he says. Yes I am starting to agree. It is too much effort to be the only driving force behind my son's recovery. He needs to get in the driver's seat and maybe the best thing I can do is to try to force him into that moment of reality where he becomes his own driving force behind his recovery. My hesitation, as always, is what if he doesn't choose recovery and he is out on his own, on the streets? The answer is not one I want to hear.

http://openroad.org.uk/ Can they help??????