Looking for advice! Family Problems - nonwedding

CMGragain · April 2015

My sister is very different from me. She smoked weed and did LSD and other drugs in college, and her 1st husband was a drug dealer. He divorced her about the time she gave birth to their only son. Sis kept her weed usage for occasional weekends only, but she was not a great example for her son. She enabled his pot smoking from the age of 12.
By age 13 he was in juvenile detention and she had surrendered her parental rights to the state. After he got out, she gave him money to flee the state. He eventually settled in California where he became a pot farmer. He has never paid a dime in taxes or social security. He does not have medical insurance. He does not have a bank account. He is now 32 years old. His Mom insists that he doesn't use anymore, but when I saw him at our mother's funeral, he was high and stank of weed.
Now that Colorado has legalized recreational marijuana, he is talking about moving here. We don't want him in our lives.
Colorado is struggling to define the boundaries of marijuana usage. It is not legal to smoke it in public. It is not legal to drive under the influence. You must be 18 to legally use it. The state is treating it the same as alcohol, which is also a dangerous drug, especially when used by children. (Yes, I drink occasionally. No, I don't smoke weed. I can't stand the stink!)
OP, I really sympathize with you. You need to establish firm boundaries, something which your Mom has obviously NOT done. Say, "NO!" You are not responsible for your brother's behavior. You are not his parent. The best way you can help him is to not enable him.

CMGragain · April 2015

psychbabe314 said:
My younger brother (16) has had issues with with weed for several years now. We caught in ~2 years ago smoking weed and we barely managed to get him to quit 10 months ago. He had been smoking weed for almost three years at that point. My mom switched him to a new high school and she began to cut back the money she gave him.

Well, this weekend my mom let him go to a concert. It went bad. She picked him up three hours later from the hotel. She just told me about this and now she is talking about sending him to stay with me and FI for a week. I don't think it is a good idea, but she is set on it.

Advice? I told her why it would make me uncomfortable having him, but she keeps insisting that he needs his big sister and a male figure (FI). What would you do? Should I invite him to come visit? Should I put my foot down and say no? I just wish we had some sort of idea about how to keep him clean.

It is not YOUR responsibility to get your brother to quit.
It is not YOUR responsibility to "keep him clean".
It is not YOUR responsibility to save your brother from the consequences of his own actions.
It IS your responsibility to set limits, and to stop enabling both your mother and your brother from hiding from responsibility.

Why do you think it is your job to do all of the above? YOU need Al-anon. You need to learn how to set limits with your family and to not enable their irresponsible behavior. I say this with love and support. You can't do this alone.

SAY NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

psychbabe314 · April 2015

ohannabelle said:

@huskypuppy14 @ohannabelle He cannot keep up his grades when
he begins to smoke weed. In the past, he has skipped school and lied to my mom
and me. He hangs out with people who do things that are worse. People smoke
weed, hell, I’ve tried it once or twice when in high school. Having him stay
with me could be an issues because he does not listen to people. If he were to
try and get drugs here, in Japan, or if he was arrested for any reason, then my
FI would lose his job and all three of us would be deported together.

That would be a serious ass problem. So, yep, I'd say exactly that to my mom. No. If he were to try and get drugs here, in Japan, or if he was arrested for any reason, then my FI would lose his job and all three of us would be deported together. So the answer is no. End of discussion.

That being said, what the hell, with your Mom? Any problem (weed or otherwise) that's been going on for years and hasn't been resolved, is a serious parenting problem, not just a problem with your brother. Mom needs to step up.

A couple of big red flags in the original post:

she began to cut back the money she gave him, and this: my mom let him go to a concert. It went bad. She picked him up three hours later from the hotel.

What? You don't give any money to kids with drug or alcohol problems. That means none. And a sixteen year old with a drug or alcohol history sure as hell shouldn't be trusted to go to a concert and stay alone in a hotel without a responsible adult. That's a genuinely terrible judgment call. I wouldn't have allowed the hotel thing for any kid, even a rule following well behaved kid.

Mom needs to take that Japanese vacation money and get both their asses into family counseling. She needs to figure out how to effectively discipline and command respect as a parent, he needs to straighten up, sober up, and follow rules. This needed to happen yesterday.

There are a million community resources for dealing with this. His school counselors can probably recommend excellent programs and local therapists/ counselors.

No parent is perfect, no child is perfect. Things happen that parents just don't know how to deal with. That's when you get help from professional people who have experience. If you don't know how to effectively fix a problem, you learn how, and what you're doing wrong. You just don't let it keep happening while you continue being ineffective. That's like standing around putting band aids on a broken leg because you don't want to deal with a hospital. Mom needs to step up.

I think you're entirely within your rights, as a sister, to say so.

CMGragain said:
My sister is very different from me. She smoked weed and did LSD and other drugs in college, and her 1st husband was a drug dealer. He divorced her about the time she gave birth to their only son. Sis kept her weed usage for occasional weekends only, but she was not a great example for her son. She enabled his pot smoking from the age of 12.
By age 13 he was in juvenile detention and she had surrendered her parental rights to the state. After he got out, she gave him money to flee the state. He eventually settled in California where he became a pot farmer. He has never paid a dime in taxes or social security. He does not have medical insurance. He does not have a bank account. He is now 32 years old. His Mom insists that he doesn't use anymore, but when I saw him at our mother's funeral, he was high and stank of weed.
Now that Colorado has legalized recreational marijuana, he is talking about moving here. We don't want him in our lives.
Colorado is struggling to define the boundaries of marijuana usage. It is not legal to smoke it in public. It is not legal to drive under the influence. You must be 18 to legally use it. The state is treating it the same as alcohol, which is also a dangerous drug, especially when used by children. (Yes, I drink occasionally. No, I don't smoke weed. I can't stand the stink!)
OP, I really sympathize with you. You need to establish firm boundaries, something which your Mom has obviously NOT done. Say, "NO!" You are not responsible for your brother's behavior. You are not his parent. The best way you can help him is to not enable him.

Ah, so you are from Colorado too? That is one of the excuses that he has tried to use (he lives in Colorado w/ my family) that it is legal. But, my mom keeps saying that it is not legal for him.

As for what I decided to do, I emailed my mom with a couple of the suggestions here and told her that he could not come to visit. If, she agrees to have him take a drug test every two weeks and he can remain sober for a certain amount of time (I recommended 8 months) and I could take a week off work (if I find a job by then) then we could revisit the idea of him coming to stay for one week. But, until then, we needed to find a better solution because what we have tried has not worked.

pegasuskat · April 2015

Spending 1 week with you isn't going to fix any of his problems. He needs your mom to take control of the situation. Why would a drug abusing teenager be sent to a concert and apparently given a hotel room and at least $300? None of that makes sense for the adult in his life to be enabling him to do. He needs rehad and a parent to enforce rules and hopefully its not already to late.

Looking for advice! Family Problems - nonwedding

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