Friends, Family & Carers Forum

[Nanna10]

Hi, I've also just posted on another thread about multiple mental health diagnosis and illicit drug use.  I need advil hisce related to the drug use.  He would normally drive to collect his boys every fortnight weekend and his teenage daughter for occasional Daddy/daughter dates (all his children live with their mothers).  However his siblings are adamant that we should tell the childrens mothers as we cannot tell when he might be drug affected and attempting to drive.  My husband and I agree with this, but the boys mother is his ex-wife and she has been extremely difficult to negotiate with over the past 5 years.  His eldest son (10 year old) desperately wants to live with his dad but they live 80 klms away so its impossible.  Both his boys love their dad very much despite seeing him in terrible tempers and abusive language towards me.  We hesitate to inform the boys mother about our sons drug use because she would immediately put a court order inn place for no further contact with him.  While we are around to monitor our sons behaviour we can and we have protected the boys from their fathers worst behaviour.  It costs us a lot of fuel and toll fees to collect the boys each fortnight but we are prepared to continue to do that for the boys safety rather than risk our son driving on highways drug affected.  But that doesn't stop him being erratic driving around on the weekends with them.  Any advice re alerting the two mothers to his drug abuse given the complexity involved of the boys needing their dad's attention?  It would destroy his eldest boy particularly not to be able to see him and the flow on affect to his school work, his maturing personality, anger issues etc.

[Lunar]

Hello @Nanna10

Thank you for sharing with us on the forus, I don't believe I have met you before, so it is nice to meet you 🙂

It sounds like you are in an extremely difficult situation with your son and his drug use and driving, putting himself and others at risk as well as his children and their contact with him if you notify their mothers of this, I can see how you are conflicted and that makes it difficult to figure out what is the right thing to do for everyone, although it doesn't seem like you can make everyone happy in this situation.

There are some other threads that might help you figure out a decision of what to do, one member @tryingtokeepsane that has a great thread called 'Husband with drug issues'

There was also a Topic Tuesday that was held that might be worth reading through : Caring for someone who struggles with drugs

There is also further support through :

Family Drug Support Australia (FDS)
1300 368 186
24 hours 7 days a week
http://www.fds.org.au
Supporting families affected by alcohol and other drugs in Australia.

• Coping Tips
• Drug Facts
• Guide to Coping
• Support Groups
• Treatment Services

I hope they can help you and keep reaching out for support here okay.

Lunar 🙂

[Acacia]

Hi @Nanna10

We haven't heard from you in a while. Just wondering how things are going with your son and grandkids? It sounds like you have been giving everything to support your family. I hope you have been able to access some support for yourselves as well. Did you get a chance to check out the links that Lunar posted above?

[Nanna10]

Thanks Acacia for checking in with me. Our son has been comparatively well behaved (!!) for the past couple of weeks. I had a very honest and somewhat harsh discussion with him last week. It got very heated because of his BPD and Bi-Polar diagnosis he won't face up to his shortcomings as a responsible adult, let alone being a responsible father. I couldn't of course shatter his illusions completely because I know his fragile sense of worth/self esteem is already extremely poor. In his "world" he "does everything for his kids" but they are ungrateful!! The reality is if they don't want to sit and talk to him while he's working on engines or mechanical parts in the garage then he hasn't got any time to play with them or take them to a park or bide riding etc. As grandparents we do that and he thinks that's why they visit on weekends when he's supposed to have custody I.e. He thinks it's a good opportunity for grandparent time. Sheesh! We're doing all the cooking, cleaning, disciplining and entertaining 24/7. As for ICE/drug use we think the proof that he's still using is that he won't agree to a drug test. I bought a saliva swab test but he reacted violently "Don't you trust me?!!"  (Ummmm, no!). He's "only" smoked ICE he's never injected drugs.   He's living with another woman now who supposedly works for Drug Arm, at least voluntarily going out in street vans. She's very anti-drugs so you would think that is the best outcome for him to have her support but in the last month we still have strong suspicions that he's either fooling her or they're both lying. (Our son is a chronic liar and very quick to cover his tracks ) 

His daughter turned 15 recently  he never has any money to spend on anyone but himself so he didn't give her anything for her birthday or take her out to dinner like he promised.  Rather he invited her over to his partners house for dinner and "now that she's 15 she could have a Vodka cruiser!"  Her mother was quite rightly furious but our sons reaction was "I give up, I've tried to be a good father all these years but you've never given me a chance to do things with her that I want to do!"  

we try to moderate and keep track of his movements ie his driving. I always check in with him every day (he's not living at home now that he's partnered with this new woman). I usually text him "How's your day - have you been busy today? Etc) 

we still worry about his ability to drive his children, particularly if he's drug affected but short of calling the police to drug test him we don't know what else we can do. I have a guilty conscience that we have still not told the mothers of his children about his previous drug use as the far reaching consequences of being denied access to his boys would be devastating to his boys. They believe his erratic behaviour is mental illness. His eldest son (10 years old) particularly adores his dad and really craves his dad's attention. He's very smart and he's figured out the only way to spend time with his dad is to sit with him while he works on his hobbies in the garage.

we have told our son if we find any evidence of drug use we will be telling the mothers of his children.  This only means that he lies and covers up even more.