Dear Christine,
I really need your advice as I am going out of my mind with worry. My problem relates to my husband and his son who seems to be on drugs.
My husband is a good man who worked hard all of his life. He sacrificed a lot to raise his four children. His first wife died when their last child was seven, so the full responsibility of looking after the children fell to him after that.
The first three have done well and all have good jobs, but the last boy is the worry. From young he was always the most troublesome.
He was the one who got into fights at school and was once brought home by the police after they held him in the bus stand and warned him about cursing.
He did not do very well in school but managed to get three CXCs.
His attitude, though, is not the best as he is always ready to quarrel and fight.
Last year we realised that he was smoking dope in the house and my husband told him he could not remain living with us if he did that.
My husband always suspected he was doing something like that, but only got proof when we caught him. Since then he hasn’t done it in the house.
For most of this year his behaviour improved. He was working as a labourer and when that job finished he got another job with the same man. We took that as a good sign. We noticed too that a particular girl was calling him more often and he seemed happiest when talking with her. I tried to find out who she was but he never said; he never brought her home either.
Anyway, last week he was in his room shouting at the top of his voice at someone on his cellphone.
I am sure he was talking to the same girl as he was telling the person that she could trust him and not to leave him. Then he began cursing and carrying on before leaving the house. I was trying to get him to talk but he wouldn’t.
He never returned home that night and had me and his father really worried. When he did come home he was in a state. You could smell that he had been drinking and smoking.
Since then he has not gone to work and the man called him twice but he refused to talk with him. He is not speaking to his father or me, though we keep trying to get him to talk.
All he does now is leave the house on mornings and come back late at night. He is not even eating because I leave food for him in the fridge as I used to before, but he does not touch it. All he seems to be doing is drinking and smoking. His father is really worried about him as he wouldn’t talk no matter how we try to get him to do that.
We are really scared that he may do something foolish like harm himself, but we can’t get him to open up about what it is that is bothering him. As he is not close with either of his sisters and brother, nor does he have any friends that we know of. We can’t even use them to get him to talk.
This situation is making my husband very sad. He feels helpless because he can’t reach him. What do you suggest we do?
– Help Us
Dear Help Us,
Your stepson seems to be going through emotional distress over a failed love affair.
From my layman’s perspective, all the classic signs are there – his withdrawal, not eating, not talking, smoking and drinking. What is particularly worrying is that he has also abruptly stopped working and is even more of a hermit.
It says a lot about a person’s character when they have no one close to them that they can trust, as well as when they turn to alcohol and drugs in crisis and refuse to communicate with those concerned about their welfare. Â
Given these facts your husband is right to be worried that his son may harm himself. I urge you to be the bedrock of emotional support for your husband as this must be a most trying time for him.
You need to check with the polyclinic nearest you as they have community mental health workers who are trained to deal with such situations. Failing this, you should contact a psychiatrist and see if they can come to your home at a time the young man would be there so that they can try to engage him.
This young man seems to have deep-seated, emotional problems as his behaviour from childhood suggests. He needs help but does not know how to ask for it, so you need to act now before he does something silly. I hope this helps.
– Christine
