What to do with a drug addict

mmj_uk said:
He's threatening suicide because it works to get money out of his mum, she'll run out of money eventually anyway so best to cut the strings asap and reduce the damage imo.
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He has been doing it for years, he told me he was going to kill himself a few years Go, when I confronted him over his behaviour. I told to grow up and I was deleting his number until he did

He says it when he has no get out, like a little kid, he's 40 !!! Pathetic he was caught driving high last week, tested for coke + for coke at roadside, yet thought it was clever to refuse the bloodtestting.
 
dcsarge said:
Does your brother live with with your mum due to his circumstance, giving him a greater emotional control with the threats of self harm? If so, I wonder if the police could help intervene via domestic abuse legislation, as I believe that covers emotional abuse through threats of suicide.
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No thank God he was until a few months ago, he lives just the road now with some skank
 
Personally I think you’ve done the right thing by getting your mum to break contact with him. Until he’s in the situation where he himself is seeking the right type of help and I think your mum was preventing that and has only prolonged this to both of theirs detriment.

It won’t be easy and he might even end up dead through suicide but he’s already walking that tightrope if he’s a heroin addict and not functioning as a healthy adult.

I’m guessing he’s not staying with your mum if she has been able to cut off contact?
 
She hasn't cut contact, I have suggested it

Being a mum means she still thinks she can fix it, I have tried telling her she isn't helping. He needs to hit rock bottom, not bounce along the bottom
 
Have a friend and her son is hooked on Crack apparently. He's stealing money, Jewelry , anything that's not tied down. She's paid for X number of rehab, tried sending him to live with his older brother. Works for a few days, he feels remorseful but goes back to it everytime.


Unless he acknowledges he needs help , and actually wants to stop using ,nothing will work mate.

Feel for ya. Horrible situation.
 
Been through something similar seen from your side of this story.
Does he know how much money your mum has available? Irrespective, could there be a possibility of getting you / your mum / any other family involved conceivably playing off a story about the money running out and your mum getting into difficulty herself? There may be some hope that seeing your mum going through some hardship herself would trigger some remorse and change.
I’d agree that the suggestion for your mum to cut all ties wouldn’t be fair on your mum. There needs to be a harsh withdrawal somehow, but some kind of support and contact should be maintained for the benefit of your brother and your mum and possibly to you to a certain extent even if you don’t feel like that right now. You’ll have a lot of anger right now and a hard-line attitude which is completely understandable but this will likely change for the positive if somehow your brother were to wake up and change.
 
There's probably nothing you can do.

Your mum's going to keep giving him money because im guessing it's just in her nature.

Your brother won't change unless he decides he wants to. No one else can force him. The bank of mum won't be helping though.
 
Worried what will happen to her the money has gone, she owes thousands and will retire in the next few years. I just don't want her turning to pay day loans. She has spoke about selling the house to "downsize"

Powerless watching her become ill and poor.
I wish they would lock him up, so she gets a break
 
asim18 said:
He's already threatening suicide so this idea doesn't make sense.

The best thing for him and the entire country is that we simply END the entire inflated drugs economy which is being used to milk money and nothing else.

If his drugs cost 1 penny per hit then it's a win win situation for society. His mother is affected 10000% less and criminal gangs will stop selling cocaine because it's worth absolutely nothing. Unfortunately the government also looses out on proceeds of crime milkage so yeah the right and best thing won't happen sadly.
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Threatening suicide is to make his mum feel guilty into giving him more money - tough love i'm afraid. He's a junkie plain and simple and wants his kick.

So to say my idea doesn't make sense, but your idea of a whole government changing its legal stance does? Even if that does ever happen, i think the OP's mum will be out on the street by the time that change happens!!
 
I'm certainly no expert but I would imagine that someone with serious addiction issues threatening suicide is enough to get them sectioned under the mental health act.

Not an easy thing to do but possibly the best option. It'll give your mother some respite without feeling like she's abandoned him and get him the help he needs.
 
ivrytwr3 said:
Threatening suicide is to make his mum feel guilty into giving him more money - tough love i'm afraid. He's a junkie plain and simple and wants his kick.

So to say my idea doesn't make sense, but your idea of a whole government changing its legal stance does? Even if that does ever happen, i think the OP's mum will be out on the street by the time that change happens!!
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Yeah plain and simple the current idea is senseless. It is literally true. It is insanity to go round in circles, the current method ensures drugs are and remain a curse to the entire planet just because some elite people are greedy and want to maximise cash milkage.

In order to actually change the world for the better society, and not to inflate some greedy people's cash stashes, we need to start focusing on the true causes of things. We cannot just keep going round in circles wondering why people become addicted to drugs and then start stealing from people.

My method ensures that 99% of ALL crime associated with drugs is completely and utterly eradicated overnight.
 
I had this in my family. I bailed him out twice to the tune of several grand and the only thing that made him sort himself out was a good kicking. He is lucky he didn't get his kneecaps shot out. :(

Oh, plus I told him I'd let them do it again and pay them a bonus instead of bailing him out any more.

Fair play he is now clean and has a lovely mrs and kids.
 
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asim18 said:
I see these cases all the ****ING time I deal with addicts every single day. It's such a pain to see these people being exploited and used as slaves to generate cash for criminals.
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In the vast, vast majority of cases, you can hardly say that a drug addict is an innocent victim.

It seems a couple people ITT seem to have more sympathy for the addict than the family their actions are affecting.
 
Just legalise weed and coke and tax it for Christ's sake. Massive windfall for the government and you destroy a large criminal contingent in one fell swoop. Register users and offer them help with no stigma attached.

The war on drugs is lost IMO.
 
FoxEye said:
In the vast, vast majority of cases, you can hardly say that a drug addict is an innocent victim.

It seems a couple people ITT seem to have more sympathy for the addict than the family their actions are affecting.
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What? More sympathy for the addict? You are wrong. My method actually ensures that the addict is the ONLY person to ever be affected by his own drug use. The current method ensures many innocent people are affected by one man's drug use.
 
asim18 said:
We need to petition the government to stop artificially inflating the price of drugs. Drugs should cost what they are worth. His drugs should cost no more than 5 pence per gram but the government make it cost up to £50 per gram so they and criminal gangs can maximise profit.
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Narj said:
Just legalise weed and coke and tax it for Christ's sake. Massive windfall for the government and you destroy a large criminal contingent in one fell swoop. Register users and offer them help with no stigma attached.

The war on drugs is lost IMO.
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The war on drugs is definitely futile, in vain. While I agree that some drugs should be legalised to remove the end-user criminality aspect, I also kinda agree with Asim's opinion in that the street gangs are state-sponsored and they have been dictating the price point all along for the establishment.
 
My sister and I have agreed the next time he is saying he is going to kill himself we want to get him sectioned. If he is really meaning it, it's the right thing to do, if it's a plot hopefully it will stop him using this as a lever in my mum.

How do I go about getting him sectioned?
 
LabR@t said:
Worried what will happen to her the money has gone, she owes thousands and will retire in the next few years. I just don't want her turning to pay day loans. She has spoke about selling the house to "downsize"

Powerless watching her become ill and poor.
I wish they would lock him up, so she gets a break
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My great aunt and uncle have a heroin addict for a daughter. They remortgaged their house in their 60s to put her through rehab and she still went back to it all. They're now both 76, poor, frail and raising her daughter to stop the daughter going through care. All I can say is, you need to convince your mum to engage with tough love. They will say anything, and do anything to get money for their fix, including guilt tripping their loved ones. I've seen the addict mentioned above, give her son a birthday card with £20 on it, and on the same day she gave it to him stealing the money back from his room. That's her stealing from her own son. You really need to get your brother help, tell your mum to absolutely stop bank rolling him. If he is in a really bad state of affairs and can't afford food, let your mum buy him food, but nothing he can then sell for drugs.

Good luck, I know how **** this situation is and how much it can tear up a family, I really feel for you and your mum. All the best.
 
Sorry to hear of your situation OP, I guess it is one thing if they're a bit of a liability, some stoner type or someone who is massively into clubbing/MDMA who has a disruptive lifestyle that affects their ability to work (though plenty of people do lead successful careers in spit of that). Someone turning into a smackhead is massively different, that's a very worrying situation to have a relative in.

I think you're right in that some sort of intervention is needed, you might want to call the crisis team for your local authority in that case. Getting your mum to stop enabling his behaviour is probably a good thing, perhaps you can all as a family have a talk with him - staging an intervention before it gets to that point again could be worth a shot (though I think there is conflicting opinion re: whether they work).
 
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