[Closed] Concerned about stepson's drug taking

Surely university is a place where mistakes can be made in relative safety with good support available.
I was a bloody nightmare at uni (drink, drugs, recklessness, mental health problems) but managed to come out of it with a degree and my future wife. I made a lot of mistakes and my life could have gone a very different way, except for my family and friends who supported me (which included the occasional slap) and helped me learn from those mistakes.

He's 20, you can't stop him making mistakes, but you can be there to support him when the time comes. As for the financial stuff, that's entirely up to you and your wife. I get that you probably don't want your money spent on drugs.

He needs some strong words regarding time and place. I doubt you will stop it from going on at Uni. You also need to make sure your wife is available to catch him if he falls. You cant force anything really.

One of my friends who I didnt know at the time did a bit of dealing at university. One day the police turned up at his halls and arrested him for dealing. Cuffed and dragged through the campus for all to see. He went to court and was given 5yrs in prison. The judge said he could finish his degree and then the day after his last exam he had to turn up to be locked up. He duly did and 18 months later was released. Its fair to say that he doesn't break the law in any way at all now and even panics when he sees friends speeding. He has always been a really decent bloke, but up was very very foolish at uni and bought into the hype.

Im sure a 30 min conversation with him would change your sons mind.

I think the big factor is you are financially supporting him, and therefore basically paying for his drugs. A living allowance? That's really generous and I didn't know too many people who had that at uni unless they were fairly well off. If you cut him off financially he might have to get a part-time job and that's the main thing which stops hedonistic lifestyles - look at the rockstars who die due to drugs, basically because they can afford to.

He does sound like he's pushing it a bit far

But I managed to get a degree, maintain a reasonable drug habit ( weed, and a bit of ecstasy, speed coke etc) and sell a bit of speed to mates

Eventually calmed down- job house wife and kids is all tickety-boo now , a few beers a weekend is most I indulge in these days.

But had a few mates who struggled , psychologically and the drugs can exacerbate those issues.

If he's someone who is prone to depression etc, then maybe it is worth explaining that moderation is key and that having fun is great but that you are happy to help him as long as his priority is study with a bit of partying on the side, not the other way round.

If he is dealing, then the buzz of dealing is addictiv hard to get away from. Your money potentially is buttons to what he is making depending on how large his network is.

Like kimbers, I managed to get a decent degree and a Masters degree while smoking the odd joint and popping the odd pill while at uni. I'm now 90% of the way through a PhD and although I haven't smoked or rolled in a number of years now, I'm fortunate enough to have had no lasting negative effects.

I've taught kids at a Russell Group university (where I'm doing my PhD) and have had a number of cases where kids have indulged in too much and it really does affect their studies. I'd say your stepson needs all the love and support he can get, so going overboard and throwing him out of the house probably isn't the best thing to do.

Most universities have a wellness service which can give advice to kids who are involved in the drug / party scene. The worrying thing about your situation OP is the dealing part; get caught and he will likely be thrown out of the university and end up with a criminal record which will restrict his job and travel opportunities too. Taking drugs is one thing, dealing opens up a whole new can of worms. I'd try to get the kid some help and support, get him to reduce his intake (for example, he should really avoid taking MDMA more than once a month, because it won't do his depression any favours).

Try to keep your worries in perspective. Pretty much everyone I knew at uni smoked weed regularly and took pills at the weekend. Many of them did a bit of dealing to fund their own use. What you see as completely irresponsible and unacceptable behaviour is actually pretty normal. The main difference is that you found out whilst most parents don't. Having been there and done much of what you describe, and come out of the other side ok, my advice would be to not attempt to curtail his lifestyle, it'll only cause a reaction which will lead him further into trouble. Try to focus on his studies, do whatever you can to make sure he completes his degree and stays out of trouble with the police. If he does that he'll grow up in his own time and learn a lot of lessons along the way. Good luck!

If you cut him off financially he might have to get a part-time job

Or he'll ramp up the dealing. Assuming it's a normal student dealer situation, selling a few pills and 8ths of weed to your mates and their mates is pretty small fry. If he needs to deal to pay for living expenses then you're talking much larger amounts and probably coke too (if he's not selling it already), which could land him in a lot of trouble. The difference could be a slap on the wrist or a custodial sentence which will have life changing consequences.

apart from missing some lectures is his studies suffering?

Try to keep your worries in perspective. Pretty much everyone I knew at uni smoked weed regularly and took pills at the weekend. Many of them did a bit of dealing to fund their own use.

Very much my experience also. Would you be happier if he was pissing money against the wall on drink instead?

Drugs and drug use are massively misunderstood because sensible debate and discussion on them has been stifled for so long.

he might have to get a part-time job

Isn't his part time job the whole problem?

I think there is very little you can do. Talk to a drugs charity, they'll be best placed to advise the approach with greatest likelihood of success.

Isn't his part time job the whole problem?

Most of the dealers I knew at uni were supported by their parents. There's also a book, Freakanomics, which demonstrates that most dealers live at home with their parents.

So unless this guy is the next Pablo Escobar (plus not getting high on his own supply), I'd bet his little enterprise is being subsidised.

The university will have support services that can help him through this. They may be more effective than parents.

It must be hard, but rather than force him to go cold turkey can you push him to seek help?

One thing that does spring to mind is dont give him big lumps of cash at a time. Drip feed it weekly rather than a terms wirth at a time.

Coming down hard and cutting him off/kicking him out is not the way forward. Do not try to tell him to stop doing drugs and that they are bad because as others have said they are very common and a lot of fun in the right circumstances and if not out of control. Dealing is a worry so maybe a soft approach telling him it's his life if he wants to experiment with recreational drugs at uni but that he could lose out on future employment if he gets a record for dealing.

My parents were very liberal and never banned me from anything but educated me and let me follow my own path of discovery so drugs was not taboo to me. I may have dabled back in my 20`s but was far more moderate than some friends who's parents would have freaked out if they knew. After a period all that late night clubbing and staying in bed feeling rough and low the next day really lost its appeal and relatively clean living is where it's at now.

It's a real tough one, this one. Just to echo the previous comments, I got together with some old schoolfriends recently and we were remarking about how we did the stupidest things when we were younger, and we've all turned out well- good jobs, stable families etc.

However, I think you are on the right track re the drug dealing- he can go to prsion for this, it happened to some of my mates, and it was not good!

Also, this really stood out for me:

He claims that he suffers from anxiety and depression and that drugs help him with this. We think they are a major factor in why he feels this way.

He may well have anxiety, god knows enough of us do, but one thing I do know is that drink, weed and class A's all make it worse!! This is also a very good area to try and support him, as it will underpin everything else that he does- for better or worse! That is easier said than done, obviously, but if he is talking about it then the most difficult hurdle has been cleared. From now on I would recommend keeping a line of communication as open as possible and try to steer him towards some kind of counselling or seeing a GP. No one will ever do anything if they are told to do it, but if they feel that they have reached that conclusion themselves then you are very likely to get a good result.

Good luck!

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He has not had any major traumas in his life

But he is your stepson, obviously I have no idea how this state came about but some kids take the splitting of their parents really hard even when to the parents its amicable.

I'll chip in with a couple of pence worth of advice gleaned from first hand experience..

Two years ago my stepson (20 at the time) was living in a squat in Stokes Croft High Street in Bristol, illegal raves every weekend, taking ketamine and MDMA every night and generally being a bit of big mouthed know it all..

Being veterans of the scene ourselves we looked to our own early adult years, and looked at other parents in our peer group that had overcome similar issues with their own children and decided to adopt a non-judgemental approach..

When he visited us we listened to his boring drug stories and tales of festival adventures, we listened to his pseudo mystic revelations and we listened to him deride us for being such clueless old straights..
We listened to it all with smiles and as we did so we gently reminded him with anecdotes from our own lives of the dangers of dealing, of jail time, of mental health problems, of addiction and of other dangerous situations..
There are a lot of interesting new studies which suggest that addiction is a symptom of loneliness, so we listened because if he didn't believe that he could come to us, if he felt that we were pushing him away, then he might end up turning to far more ignorant or even sinister people for support..

We tried to put it to the back of our minds and rely on him to come to us if he was in trouble... which he did..

Last year he told us that his social life was falling apart, his drug use was spiralling out of control, his mood was becoming very low and his mental health unstable..
Which is when we stepped in..

18 ridiculously tough months later and he has held down a full time job for six months and has his own place.. He's relatively drug free and has an admirable insight into his misadventures

As has been said already it's fairly standard student lifestyle, some of the most successful of my uni friends partied hard through their twenties and have come through into late thirties fully functioning even high flying members of society. I do know a few that fell by the wayside, over did it and are a bit damaged though, but more from psychedelics. I never took mandy but smoked a lot of weed and still seem to be ok. I think booze culture is more damaging to your body and society as a whole, though anxiety and heavy weed use do not go well together and it might be worth keeping an eye on that.

The thing that might have the longest lasting impact is the dealing, I don't know if mandy is still class a but if he's caught that could hang over him for years and affect jobs and travel visas etc.

If it's not a lifestyle you have experience of it's worth following or reading the Vice website to get a feel of what yoofs get up to. There's also charities that can advise from experience, I only know of the one in Edinburgh which is or was called Crew 2000 I think.

Mandy most certainly is still class a and yes a dealing rap will severely screw your prospects up until the conviction is spent.

I agree with everything yunki said.

Might be (ok, definitely is) normal enough to try a few things at uni. Not so normal to be unable to keep it under control and under wraps when visiting parents and relatives etc. I think the OP is right to be concerned, though I don't have any solutions.

Thanks for the responses everyone. He has never met his father as his mother split with him when she was pregnant (he was violent). I met her when he was six and we had a daughter who is now ten.

He is quite gifted - a natural athlete (apart from the asthma), quite bright, a talented guitar player and quite handsome - but he has never had that much confidence and needs lots of validation. In the past this could come from us, his teachers or football coaches but since his teens it has been the approval of his peers that he craves.

I did some very limited experimentation with drugs in my 20's and if he was doing similar I would not be too worried. The dealing and taking cannabis to ward of anxiety is what worries me.

His mother is totally anti drugs and always look at the worst case - e.g. what would happen if someone had a bad reaction to drugs he supplied and died. She has been worried since he left and we have had other issues this year (redundancy, death in extended family, family member diagnosed with terminal cancer) so his behaviour has not gone down well.

He is also very easily led. I can see a situation where he could start taking really damaging drugs, injecting etc.

I will check out what support services his university can offer. I think the main issue is that he does not think he has a problem and until he acknowledges this there is not much I can do.

Thanks again - I guess that there is no easy fix for this.

I agree with everything yunki said.

a sat nav can show you the direction to go in, but the driver makes the decisions, think of yourself as the sat nav.

Leave it to outside agencies they are able to stand aside for emotions involved between families.

I'm an academic and have seen this sort of thing quite a bit. As many have said, a certain amount of dabbling is pretty common but this sounds as if it could be a bit more than that.

What university is he at? Many universities have very good counselling/advisory services which are very experienced at picking up the pieces. He should also have a tutor or similar who should be monitoring progress (lots of 'shoulds' here- some tutors are much more diligent than others and some universities are better than others).

If your stepson is not coping academically there will already be indications- classes missed, work not handed in, quality of work- and a competent institution will be picking these signs up. Do you know anything about his academic progress, or do you have a tutor's name? They are limited in what they can say, but it is not unprecedented for a worried parent to get in touch. Such concerns can be useful in building up a more complete picture of a student who's not coping.

Does he have exams when he goes back in January? These give a a very clear indication of students who are struggling. We use them as a tripwire- people who fail come under the microscope and are monitored carefully, but the exams count very little towards final degree class so screwing up doesn't have lasting consequences.

It is worth raising this with the university. It is not unknown for parents to think the student is attending university while the student has jacked the course in- that would clearly be difficult.

Hope this helps

I'd maybe get his mum to say to him if there's one change he will make for her right now it's that he stops the dealing. At that age you're still basically a teenager and like to do the opposite of what you're told but that's the thing that is most likely to lead to most immediate trouble unless it really is just close friends he's supplying. It probably makes him feel important and popular but it doesn't seem like he really needs to do it financially.

Weed and anxiety wise I'd keep an eye out for signs of becoming very withdrawn from friends and socialising or leaving the house.

I wouldn't worry about him moving on to injecting etc personally, at least based on my experience of friends who like their party drugs.

I think trying a little bit of drug taking at his age is normal. Like a lot of other things in life though, moderation is everything.

Anxiety in my experience will only be made worse by drugs, and if you already experience it I wouldn't touch them.

Dealing however is most certainly not normal. That is serious stuff, and TBH if that was my son I would threaten to dob him in if he didn't stop.

IME a lot of people with a "reasonable habit" sell some to fund it - so that part in many respects is normal once you are on that path. I have a few friends / kids friends who have screwed their lives up with drugs inc "just" cannabis (permanent mental damage / illness). I guess if it where me (and thankfully never has been) I would sit him and down and explain it can go very different ways and ask him why he thinks he can handle it. Also worth explaining how painful it is for his mum.

but he has never had that much confidence

The MDMA will be giving him more confidence helping him make new 'friends' at Uni who will undoubtedly need drugs, dealing to them will build his confidence further which in turn makes more 'friends'..........

You really do need to speak to the correct people about this as my advice would be to just keep an eye on him and hope nothing bad happens. It all sounds vey familiar from my uni days which I have absolutely no regret about and am pleased to be part of that culture where every pound was spent on mdma and weed, gathering and distributing. Still good friends with same mates I had at uni and we all had the same fun back then as your stepson is having now and we're all doing well in life - families, jobs, houses, health etc and some of us still relive the days but just for the night at this age, not days on end!

I have two daughters aged 21 and 23 who enjoyed their early clubbing days and told me lots of stories from their nights out (admitted they had dabbled but didnt enjoy so luckily I had no worries.......and they werent pulling the wool over my eyes as i knew what to look for and they both lived at home and came home every night!), but there tales made it obvious that coke and violence spoil the dance scene as it did in 2000. If, and its a big if, your ss is dealing a bit of mdma and weed to friends then theres a good chance it will just phase out............assuming he's not caught first. If its coke then its a much different story as lots of unsavouries involved (imho).

Either way you need to seek help, just remember you might be blowing it out of proportion, big worry though.

Goof luck either way, hopefully just a silly phase he's going through, a phase i have seen every person I know doing it coming out of it the other side with nothing but good memories.

What university is he at? Many universities have very good

Sounds like Manchester, Fallowfields halls...

He needs to met someone who's been inside for dealing. I know someone who was, and he has talked many out of it from his experiences.

Here's an idea suggested by Mrs Daz (a drug worker of 15 years) which I'm not entirely sure about. Threaten to shop him to the cops. Sounds extreme, but as she told me, even if you carry it through, they're unlikely to be too interested in a small-time student dealer, but could give him a scare that'll stop the dealing in it's tracks. Assuming they don't go round when he's just resupplied, but I guess you could warn him first. High risk strategy I guess, and it'll come with a big risk of severely damaging your relationship with him, but it could at least prevent him from getting into bigger trouble if you think it's that bad.

Sounds like Manchester, Fallowfields halls...

Bang on the money and that makes me even more concerned. I knew that they had the reputation of being a "party" place but for somebody to guess that from the information given is very worrying.

He was determined to go to Manchester. He did not quite get the grades for his preferred course and was offered a place on another related but less popular course which he took. He was offered a place on his preferred course at another university but was adamant that he wanted to go to Manchester.

His mother has sent him back to the halls and we have stopped paying him an allowance. Hopefully he will get a job, realise how lucky he was to be supported and be more sensible. The alternative is not great. We do not know that he was dealing whilst at Manchester and I hope this does not tempt him to do so.

I am not finding too much concrete information about drug support at Manchester - I guess I could encourage him to see a counselor?

I find it pretty unbelievable that dealers can hand out business cards with mobile numbers on. Surely it would be simple for the Police and University authorities to work together and stop this?

Thanks again for responses.

a drug worker of 15 years

As Mrs Dazh has direct relevant experience this suggestion would carry a lot of weight with me. Tell him it's for his own benefit as well as the lives of other people's kids. Ask him how his mum would feel to see her son in the dock at at a trial / inquest where another parent's child has died ?

I went to Manchester and lived opposite Fallowfield halls. It is a party scene and i had an amazing time. It is true about business cards and "taxis" delivering drugs in under half an hour.

I saw many people taking drugs and for most it is phase. I wouldn't be concerned with the consumption as it will pass once the "honeymoon" period particularly regarding mdma ends.

Dealing however is different. I would have chat saying dealing is not cool but just be careful with what you are taking as it is likely this to continue whatever you say.

Good luck.

OP - If you wanted to drop me an email we could chat about the various places you could contact for support and advice on this (I'm a youth worker). Email is in my profile.

I only recognised the halls from my daughter's description - she was there last year, had a great time and has moved on to sharing a house and doing more work.

I understand why you're concerned, I would be too. A few observations though...

- If he suffers from anxiety & depression then stopping smoking weed is the absolute top priority IMO.
- MDMA is a class A drug and dealing it is a bad idea, but personally I'd prefer my kids to be taking that than coke, spice or other legal highs.
- I have to agree that his mum's reaction is probably not ideal. I'd be looking to address the mental health concerns and suggest he not go raving every weekend, so it doesn't become normalised or even a routine.
- Maybe he'd like to join the active and friendly MTB society (my pal is a member).

Cletus- I have good connections in Manchester so I am happy to try and help, but maybe we should take this private? You should be able to see my email address in my profile