Am I enabling my loved one?

I had a call from a mom about her 25-year-old son. She told me that she had been speaking to a clinician. The clinician had said to her that her son would never get well and would never stay in treatment long enough to experience the miracle of recovery until she stopped enabling him. She was calling me to say, am I enabling him? I told her I’m not a clinician, but maybe I could ask you a few questions, and we can talk about it. So, I asked her son how old he was, and she said he was 25. She said he doesn’t work, and he could barely get out of high school. He’s had a couple of odd jobs here and there, but he doesn’t work. The mother said her son lives with her and gives money to him whenever he asks. She and her husband paid for the care their son drives, and they also paid for his phone and his internet connection. The mother said they buy food for their son, but he’s got terrible behavior despite all of these. He was ungrateful and disrespectful. He typically spends his day in his room, playing video games, talking to his friends, and smoking marijuana. I then asked if he had been to treatment, and the mother said yes. They forced him once to get into treatment for a week, then he left. The parents even gave back the car to him because they thought he needed it.

The point here is, if a loved one is suffering from substance use or mental illness and you want to get them into treatment,t you have to be the parent and make the decision they cannot make. If your loved one could make the decision, they would have made it already. If you want to stop this merry-go-round:

1. Stop dealing with this situation, and then stop enabling your loved one.
2. Stop funding their use of drugs or their mental illness.
3. Do what needs to be done and get them into treatment.

That’s where we can help you. There are a number of tools here in Florida, such as the Marchman Act and Guardianship, that we can use to help you get your loved one into treatment to stop this behavior, so you can finally rid them of this curse of substance use and mental illness. Get them the help they need so they can be productive members of society to be a good son or daughter, a good husband or wife, or a good parent. I’m sure that if you’ve reached out to us, it’s because you’re sick and tired.

I’ve spoken to many moms and dads over the years. If you want help, and if you want this to stop, give us a call. I’m here to help you. My phone’s answered 24/7. I have a great team of professionals that can help you to stop this madness.

With that said, thanks for tuning in. See you in the next video.