The Underlying Current

Once again, the stepson is back home. Of course, he still has the problem but he is learning to hide it very well now. I'm sure that he is afraid that I am going to try to commit him again. hell YEAH I'm going to try to get him committed!

Anyway, my wife said that he was up walking around the house from 0300 to 0500 this morning. When I got up, I realized that my computer bag had been rifled through.

An ending has to occur for this soon - one way or another. Either we have to get him committed or it's him or me. I am not going to put up with this shit much longer.

*sigh*

The Long Walk

Last night, the stepson took off out into the rain at around 10:30. I don't know what time it was when I heard him come crawling back in. It was late. Maybe 2 or 3 am.

I guess that we need to offer him sleeping pills so that he can stay out of the crapper. (When he starts staying up all night is when the paranoia crap starts happening.)

That's all I got today... well, so far.

He's Baaaack!

Over the last week, my stepson has slowly withdrawn from everyone around him. A couple of days ago, he started locking his bedroom door. Then his mom walked into his room and found the windows open - and it was cold as a witch's @#% out there!

Last night, I had emailed home telling my wife that I was heading home and asked she needed anything other than wine. HE answered back on her blackberry requesting beer.

Then last night, he drank an entire bottle of wine and he was smoking in his room. So, I will no longer buy him cigarettes and I think that we are going to move the wine cooler out of the house. I'm thinking that a neighbor might help us with that. Looks like it's time my wife stopped drinking as well.

So, he is now heading down into those depths of his hell again... JUST in time for Christmas. Merry freakin Christmas!

*sigh*

The Birthday Bash

Yesterday was the stepson's birthday - 25 going on 12 - and my wife and I met up with him and his middle brother at a "local" adult arcade for supper. Everyone carefully stayed away from the obvious taboo subjects and dinner went fine. Then the middle brother brought in the gift(s) that he and the oldest brother had purchased for the stepson. When the stepson opened the gifts, we could just SEE it in his face where his thoughts were going. One of the gifts was a watch. Another was a new wallet.
The watch will probably disappear the next time he has an episode because it is something new in his life and obviously contains a bug that is spying on him or trying to control his mind somehow.
The wallet is just going to remind him that we took his license and atm card away.
Anyway, the stepson has to return home today because he has the second of three doctor's appointments tomorrow morning. There goes another $250, cash.
*sigh*

The Holiday Weekend

So far, the stepson is still doing well. He is acting completely normal, although he will still spit out exactly what you give him. In other words, when his mom yells at him, he yells right back. So, hopefully, she'll learn to chose her tone a little more judiciously in the future.

The next step for him is that he has to agree to therapy with his mother. If he does not, his world will remain small. He has the second of three doctor's visits on Thursday for his Staph infection. Hopefully, there will not be any more problems.

I need to get the doctor's email address so that I can let her know that she needs to make it very clear to him that he has to continue to take the medicine all the way until the end or the Staph will just come back. Otherwise, I think once the physical symptoms of the rash go away, so will his attitude about taking the medicine correctly.

*sigh*

Wife home - Catch-up

The weekend was quiet with just my stepson and I at the house. On Saturday, his brother was supposed to come pick him up and play golf with him. He canceled at the last minute - of COURSE! So, the stepson moped around all afternoon.

On Sunday, his brother actually showed up and took him to his house! *whew!* The stepson stayed there until yesterday.

My wife came back from her sister's house on Monday. We went to a local fodder and during our meal, she started going off about how I was getting so forked by the company that I work for because I now have to be on call for a product that I don't have anything to do with - and that produces a LOT of emergency calls in the wee hours. She was REALLY pissed off about it. In the end, she started acting like it was MY fault. So, I said, "You know, I don't really see how this (meaning her going off on me) was solving anything." She immediately took some other way than the way I meant it. She hasn't talked to me since.

Yesterday, I got home from work and found the stepson back from his brother's house. I went back to the bedroom and found my wife all curled up in a ball in the bed. So, I tried to talk to her YET AGAIN! nadda. Screw this shit!

Eventually, she got up and went into the living room where she accosted the stepson about his antibiotics. He immediately mirrored her attitude which quickly escalated everything to yelling. (We're talking microseconds here!) I calmed the situation down - YET AGAIN! - and we finally got an answer out of him.

Guess we're back to the same ol' same ol'

*sigh*

The Haircut

Last night I got home from work and saw empty beer bottle and a tumbler that had whiskey in it.

So, I took the bottle of whiskey with me to poker night and just left it there. *sigh*

This morning, my stepson asked me for money for a haircut. it's Friday. I ain't giving him cash. End of story

Staffing Staph Stuff

Took the stepson to doctor for a follow-up appointment for his staph infection. Found out that he has the bad kind of staph... that is resistant to antibiotics.

$120 for office visit
$180 for first 2 weeks of the 6 week treatment
$$ Half-day lost from work
Mastercard - the choice of millions of ex-felons to treat their staph infections.

*sigh*

Talked with my wife and we decided that it would probably be better to hide the alcohol until after his treatment is over. If this round of antibiotics do not clear him up, he has to be hospitalized!!

She Leaves

Yesterday around noon, my wife - the stepson's mom - left for her sisters for a few days. I guess that we'll find out if I can get him to crash!

I called home in the afternoon to find out if the cable guy had showed and to get the stepson to grab the mail. He sounded fine.

Last night, I got home about 5:30 or so. He seemed fine. In fact, he was just getting back from walking to Taco Bell for some supper. I stuck around until about 8:30 and then told him I had to go to work.

I was trying to leave him alone by himself, especially with the alcohol.

Anyway, I got home this morning about 0430 and he was asleep in his room. When I woke up around 11, he was laying on the couch in the living room watching TV.

I asked him about his Staph infection and told him that I was going to get him an appointment for a follow-up. After talking with my wife, I think that we are going to take him to this lady doctor.

a'ight.

WIly Coyote Mode

Well, yesterday was a failure. My stepson refused to keep his appointment with mental health - which I knew that he would.

I have shipped my wife off to her sister's house so that I can implement plan "Wily Coyote Mode". It's simple. I am going to use all of the knowledge that we have gained so far to get my stepson to crash. Once that has happened, I will start calling into the hotline and have the little mobile crisis team out to the house as often as it takes for him to be committed.

Oh yes, I WILL win this battle!

*sigh*

Appointment Day

Well. Today is the day when my stepson has a supposed appointment with Mental Health. There are three possible direct outcomes here. 1) At the last moment, he refuses to go. or 2) We get there and find out that he lied and there is no appointment. or 3) We get there and really does have an appointment and he keeps the appointment.

If option three happens, that has two possible outcomes 1) He tells the truth about what is in his head and they admit him/put him on drugs/whatever OR 2) He lies about the lies and acts completely normal and they do nothing.

If they do nothing, then we have two options; 1) We get him 1013'd 2) We kick him to the curb.

I seriously doubt that we will successfully get him 1013'd and even if we did, I think that he will be able to lie his way out of it.

However, I truly don't wanna kick him out because he will not make it very long on the street by himself. First, it's now getting very cold at night - too cold for someone in the elements. Second, his mind is so confused, he truly doesn't have the capacity right now to save himself.

I believe we are heading into a Catch-22.

*sigh*

Back to the norms

Well, his brother came over last night and hung out with him for awhile. Of course, he is VERY normal now. Hopefully, he will be in the down mode for his appointment this coming Monday.

All I got!

Win # 1

This morning, I got out of the shower and got dressed for the day. My stepson was already up and eating breakfast. HA! He is ready to go to the doctor for the rash that he has all over him. (It's even on his FEET!)

My wife just paged me and said that they took him immediately back to the ER section.

He is also VERY normal acting today.

Round 423

Well, his mom picked him up and convinced the cop to drop the trespassing charge. As soon as he got into the car, he said that he did not have a mental problem and refused to go to the mental part of hospital. He did say that he would go and get rash checked out.

*sigh* He his leaving us no choice here. Backing us into a corner. In fact, this is how bad it is. Anything in the house that we want to make sure he doesn't just pick up and take apart or throw away or burn in the fire pit, we have to put into the car or store in our room while we are doing what normal people would call huddling under the covers with a flashlight. My wife tremoring in terror that the next bad thing is going to happen. So, I ask you, dear blog, what the hell!?

I have had it up to the top of my bald head of living with this shit on a daily basis in my own damn house - a place that I shoudl be able to forkin relax. Screw that crap. It's either he does this or finds some place else to live.

End of story.

Found HIM!

Wife just called and said that a police station for a community about 15 miles from our house picked up the stepson and will hold him until she gets there. He also agreed in front of the cops to allow his mom to take him directly to the hospital.

*sigh*

Missing link

Well, stepson is still gone. Saturday night, we wound up filing a missing person report with local county police. Of course, they advised us that since the stepson is of age, he has the right to not wanna come back.

I just hope that he gets help one way or another.

*sigh*

The Case of the Dissappearing Stepson

Three days after the last mysterious dissappearence, the stepson stepped out again. Last night at around 6 pm, he went out and started a fire in the pit... then suddenly he just wasn't back there anymore.

Now is Saturday morning and he's still not back.

Attitude Boy Strikes Again

I got home from work last night and found the laundry going full force. Then my stepson walked through the kitchen and I asked him if the inprocessing guy from the county had called back. He said no. So, I asked him to call the guy one more time and leave another message - hoping that I would get him to do it in front of me because I think that he is lying. He got all pissy and said that he wasn't going to call him again. I calmly told him to call one more time just to make sure that the guy understood the urgency. He said he would.

Then I asked if he had called and got an appointment for the rash on his leg and groin. He said that he would "do it tomorrow." I told him that if the rash turned out to be a staph infection it could easily move to his blood stream if he didn't get it treated asap. Then I mentioned that if he got Staph in his blood stream he was going to be so forked!

Both of his brothers called yesterday and talked with him on the phone. Now suddenly they are saying that he is completely normal and don't understand what our problem is! MUwwhwhhwhahahhahahahh! Morons! If they would rather bury their head in the sand and pretend that nothing is going on, then I say, "Fine! If your brother's future is not important to you, go for it."

Here's what I think is going to happen. He is going to continue to lie about calling and making appointments and then I'm going to kick his ass out of the house. He's 25 years old and I'm pretty sure that he'll just get into prison-kind-a trouble again. Everybody's gotta crash sometime and if he refuses to voluntarily turn himself in, then my options are limited.

There is another possible future. This future will involve him crashing again. This time I will not hesitate to call the hotline and get a pro on the scene. He will be 1013'd if he won't do it voluntarily.


*sigh*

Letter of Advice

Two nights ago, my stepson got all mad about his $10 being unattainable. So, he took off walking - at 12:30 am. He finally came back around 8 or 9 pm last night. In the meantime, I had responded to his statement about focusing on fires and being by himself so much because he was bored. Here is the letter:

Last night you said you were bored. I believe it! It seems like all you do is wake up, walk to fire pit and figure out ways to make fire burn... then finally crash at midnight or so. That would make anyone bored after a while! So, while you were being pissed off last night and stomping around the house I thought of some things that could help you fight boredom in a constructive way while you wait for an appointment with Northside.

Find a schedule and stick with it. It could look something like this;

0800 - Get up.
0815 - Walk around the neighborhood - a few times. (While you are walking, think about something good that has happened to you in the past.)
0900 - Shower.
0930 - Eat a good breakfast.
1000 - Write down the thing that you were thinking about during your walk. (In a blog, in a file on the computer, on paper, somewhere!)
1030 - Read a newspaper. (There are many newspapers online: NY Times, Atlanta Journal Constitution, etc) Don't just read the sports section, read the whole thing. Learn something new. Learn a new word. Research a person that you read about in the news. Find out who they are, what makes them tick, why they are in the news. In what ways are you like them? In what ways are you different from them?
1130 - Write down what you learned. Use the new word you learned in your writing. Write about your opinion about a news item that you read.
1230 - Take a break and eat a light lunch.
1330 - Search job postings for different kinds of jobs - these can also be found on the internet. If you find a job that you know nothing about, research it. Find out what it takes to become that person. What does that person actually do on the job?
1400 - write down what you learned about the job.
1500 - Take a break and contemplate. What would be the steps you would need to take to go from where you are now to having the job you researched? (Don't worry about whether you think it is something you could or would do. Just do the exercise.)
1530 - Write down what you think the steps should be.
1600 - Read what you wrote yesterday. Revise if you want.
1700 - Take a break and contemplate. Think of something that you have done in the past that you wish you had not done or that you wish you had done differnetly. Think about what the situation was, what you would do if you could go back and change it, what you would do if the same situation came up again.
1730 - Write about it.
Evening - Watch a little TV. Hold a conversation with us about what you found that day in the news. Interact with us on some level.
2300 - sleep.

When I say write, I don't mean write like someone is going to come along behind you and read what you are writing. Write for yourself. Do it in a place that you don't have to worry about us finding it. What you write is yours, not ours. There are many places on the Internet which would give you a safe and anonymous place to write. No one has to know that it is you writing. What you write doesn't have to be perfect or even interesting to the world. It is
only a place for you to say what's on your mind. http://www.blogger.com is a pretty good place to create an anonymous blog. There are others.

Stop selling yourself short. Don't aim for a menial job that just gets you by each day and will bore you to tears. Think big! Don't be afraid to fail. Failure gives you a chance to see what you did wrong and fix it. Write about it.

Understand that you are a person worthy of respect. Respect yourself and learn to respect others. Find a positive thing about yourself every day. Write about it.

Think about how the world appears from other people's perspectives. Why do they act the way they do? Try to understand your mom. Try to understand your brothers. Try to understand me. By learning through the actions of others you can get a better understanding of yourself. Write about it.

Learn patience. Learn love. Learn forgiveness. Learn respect. Learn happiness. Learn to be inspired by others. Learn greatness. Learn humility. Learn to ask for forgiveness. Write about it.

Visit wikipedia.org, visit dictionary.com, find a joke every day. Read someone else's blog. Read a book. There are even places on the Internet where you can read a book... for free! gutenberg.org is one such place.

Learn to whittle. Learn to paint. Learn how a gyroscope works. Learn how to navigate using the stars. Learn the difference between port side and starboard side.

There are many, many, many things to do with your time other than sitting around worrying about a fire in the back yard wondering what you are going to do in the future. Or who's doing what to you. Basically sitting around dwelling on negative things. Turn this around and think about positive things!

And last but not least, know that I love your mom more than anything in the world. More than computers even! And she loves you even though you may not think that is true sometimes. Because you are part of her, I love you too. Because I love you, I want to see you succeed. Succeed in finding happiness with yourself, with your life. And finding that path to happiness starts with getting help for those thoughts that keep you awake for days at a time. Getting help getting rid of the people in your head, taking back control of your mind. And this appointment that you will get today or tomorrow is the start of that help. I suspect that keeping that appointment and going through with it is not going to be easy. You are going to doubt. You are going to be paranoid. You are going to think that you don't need the appointment. But, if you will just be brave and trust just a little bit, enough to go to the appointment and any appointments afterwards, you will beat these demons.

The $10 battle

Last night, I got home and he was sitting outside tending his little fire... again. *rolling eyes* Towards me, he was very pliant but it appears he is getting very upset with his mom. Probably because she does not work so they are around each other all day long. I think that it's time she starts volunteering or something.

Anyway, he took a picture off the wall in the kitchen and now it is just gone. (We suspect he used it to get a fire going.) So his mom took his debit card. Every time he asks about it, she asks about her picture. It's a stand-off! Anyway, we think that he only had $10 in the account anyway. So this makes the fight over ten bucks. Oh well.

Last night, I talked with the guy that processes in new mental health cases in our county. He was very straight forward about voluntary vs involuntary commitals. He also explained that more than half the time, voluntary committals uncommit themselves at the last minute. So, just as I expected, this is a war of patience and inner power.

*sigh*

Lies! Lies!

Sunday, October 27, 2006
We returned and found the stepson in the backyard still. I asked him if he had called the number and he said that he did. I asked what they said and he responded with, "They said they were all booked up until Monday." (What a freakin liar.)

While cleaning up the kitchen, my wife found the remains of a Sun FM radio that I had loaned to him for him to listen to. He had broken it up into little pieces.

Tomorrow, he has promised to call the locat outpatient place. Tomorrow is the pivot point. If he does not call, then we are going to have to force his hand because I fear that he is going further into the well than he can handle and something bad is going to happen.

A Ploy for Sanity

Saturday, October 28, 2006
We awoke and the stepson was outside. However, a picture was missing from the kitchen. We asked him what he did with the picture and he acted all pissed off like we were accusing him of something. We said it plain English, "We know that you took the painting off the wall in the kitchen - what did you do with it?" Again, he went with the act of being defensive like we were accusing him of something he couldn't understand.

I walked out to the fire again and just sat for a few minutes. I said, "So what's going on?" He said, "Just trying to work it all out." I said, yeah, there's a lot to work out. He made the comment that I started it and it was me that was forking with him. I re-iterated that he needed to call the local county mental hospital and get some help and he said that he would call. I volunteered to look the number up for him. He declined.

We decided that mywife was going to have another breakdown if she stayed here another night so we took off and went to Helen, GA for the day and night. Before we left, I handed him the phone and the calling card for the local mental hotline and told him that if he wanted the voices to go away and start getting better, he had to call them and tell the truth. He said that he would call.

We left.

The Jeep has an adventure without me!

Friday, October 27, 2006
Woke up this morning and used the bathroom. While I was there, I heard my Jeep start up and take off. Then my wife came back and asked if I had given the stepson permission to use the Jeep to "go buy socks". I said that I had not talked with him yet this day.

We waited for over EIGHT hours for him to come back, the entire time having his brother look for him here and there. I went to his ex-dealer's house to see if he had gone there. He was not there. When he did return, he said that he had been just trying to work it all out. I went out later to his little fire pit and talked with him about stuff. Like what kind of jobs were out there, etc.

That night, my wife did not sleep very well because he was constantly moving around the house.

Fire & firewater

Last night the stepson and I went to our local hardware store and purchased the wood and sheetrock, etc to finish the laundry room floor. While we were checking out, the girl running the register had NO clue. She intimated that we should go back to where we got the wood and bring her back a barcode for it.

The stepson got pissed off and said, "It's not my job, you do it." this is not really like him. He is not completely up right now.

Later - about 9 pm or so - he went out and restarted the scrap-wood-fire in the back yard and then proceeded to sit out there for about 3 hours. I threw on the 'jammies and walked out there to suggest that he save some of the wood for a future cold night. He asked if we had any bourbon left. I told him that we did not and that he needed to be very careful about alcohol consumption because it was a depressant. He said, but it's also a stimulant. I gently corrected him about that misconception.

I returned to bed and about 20 minutes later or so, he came in and went to bed.

*sigh*

The Talk

So, last night my wife and I pulled my stepson into the living room and had a talk with him. We told him that we had found an outpatient place near the house. Yes, it did involve talking with psychiatrist, but it was not one of those places where they throw you in a padded room and locked you in, etc. We told him that he had no choice in the matter but that he did have to go and get help from somewhere.

I could see the gears going like mad in his mind as he tried to think of some way out of this. He then stated that all he needed to do was find a job and he'd be alright. We both said no, that wasn't the problem.

So, I explained about the human bio-rhythm behavior in everyone and how his cycle just dipped too low on the down side. He needed to have help leveling this out because when he the down cycle, it was going life-threatening too low.

He abdicated and said that he would call the guy when the guy got back from vacation on Monday.

Then he got himself another beer and hit the back porch.

I started having a bad feeling that it was going to depress him about our talk. So, I went out onto the back porch and said basically that I was worried that our talk was going to make him depressed and that he shouldn't dwell on it. Then I said that at the end of the day his mom and I were not doctors and we didn't know exactly what was wrong and it could be something extremely simple. No sense in worrying about the appointment because really all he would be doing is just dumping his problems onto this guy. Then the guy would help him sort through it all and possibly have him get some tests - physical tests.

That seemed to make him feel better. (So I guess it was worth freezing my a$$ off out there on the deck for that particular thirty minutes.)

The Story, Thus Far

Last week, after dealing with my stepson's meth addiction on and off for two years, we finally came to the realization that the meth has brought out bi-polarism and then even worse, he has plunged head-long into schizophrenia - possibly both paranoid and delusional. This is not even CLOSE to being a close call. This boy talks to the voices, curses like a sailor with Tourette-syndrome with NO recognizable sentence structures at all. As example of the gibberish, the other day he said, "Fork! Garbage bat voice want sub force talk! Lies!" Now, you tell me if I'm right or not.

So, when he was at his worst, I asked him if he would voluntarily allow me to get him help getting the voices out of his head - you know, the ones that are controlling everything. He pleaded for me to do it. So, his momma and I drove him to our nearest county hospital where we spent 10 FREAKIN hours going from one triage to another. We finally made it to the psyche-ward - interestingly on floor 13, I kid you not - and he was very tired. (Duh! Spent 10 hours sitting on our hands waiting... and the poor boy's paranoia had kept him up for days at this point!) Anyway, he was laid out across a couple of chairs in the waiting room for the psyche-ward catching a couple of minutes of shut-eye. A cop walks into the room, streaks over to him, smacks him in the head with rolled up papers and yells at him for sleeping. That set him off - as it would any NORMAL person! He immediately started gibbering and un-volunteered himself. *rolling eyes* 10 hours wasted by a forkin cop. If I ever see that pig-licker, I'll kick the apple into his teeth!

*sigh*

So, we dejectedly drive back home with my stepson gibbering his nonsense into my ear the entire way. When we got home, we gave him two Tylenol PMs and he conked out. My wife and I got some shut-eye while he was down.

Later that evening, he was still gibbering and talking to the voices. He was making crazy declarations like "I hate you for loving me! You're just going to have 1013 my a$$ because I'm never going to let them hypnotize me!" So, I told him that we would try to get him some help a different way. Figuring that if I called into the crisis line, told them what was going on, they - yes THEM - would send out a mobile psyche to the house. THEN, my stepson would spout his gibberish and delusional rants in front of said psycho, I mean Psychologist, who would immediately 1013 him.

Would it be THAT easy!?!?!? Ummm, I don't think so. She and her plainclothes-cop sidekick showed up THREE hours later and my stepson would not say a word in their presence. Not one word. Psyche packs it all up and they move on up the road.

That's when I figured out one of the small cues that he does when he is coming up out of the depths of the paranoid-delusions! He started watching TV again!

Anyway, after psycho and her fairy left, we talked with him for like an hour, slowly moving the subject off of him and onto other people who have been helped by therapy, etc. By the end of the conversation, he was completely normal. Completely! Go figure.

Now our plan is to try to get him to make an appointment with a local outpatient place that can suck up the no payment-option and hopefully get him diagnosed and on the right drug and in therapy BEFORE his next death-defying sludge into the world of nightmares.



*sigh*