u/Warm_Ad5300

This one kind of blew my mind. My 27-year-old alcoholic son has been passing out and vomiting all over my pkg lot, where he currently lives in his car. He can barely walk straight, but this is what his CARE Team said:

We bought him breakfast and spoke with him for a while. I called the rehab. They may have a bad available next week. He needs to take a shower soon. Hopefully we can get him to LA fitness and have him change out the clothes he has on. I have to transport another client today and tomorrow. I won’t be back till next Tuesday.

So, how’s this going to work? I’m trying to picture it. Are the 2 CARE Team workers going to drive my son to L.A. Fitness, wait in the car, and hope he can stagger past the front desk and into the shower?

Are they going to carry him in and say to the front desk workers, “We don’t have memberships like he does but he needs a shower, so we’re going to help him walk there.”

I’m also trying to imagine the scene in the locker room, where there’s a group shower. Will it end up smuggled onto social media by another gym member?

There are 8 CARE Teams in L.A. with the Dept of Mental Health that outreach to people who are homeless. Until Jan 1st of 2026, they either had to have Schizophrenia or psychosis. I’m in sales, so I pushed my way past this requirement for my son, who has BPD, and got his CARE Court petition granted last spring in 2025. People with just substance abuse issues weren’t allowed to apply until this year when more rehabs are being built with Prop 1 funding.

But are they taking the homeless that are living under a bridge to L.A. Fitness to shower if they have a membership? And do any of them have memberships?

I told the CARE Teams worker that I have 4 boxes of my son’s clean clothes in my house if he’d like to ask me for a set before they take him to L.A. Fitness to shower, and he said he would.

So, who’s enabling my son here? Me? His CARE Team? Both of us?

My 27-year-old alcoholic son’s back living in his car in my pkg lot ever since Mother’s Day weekend. He made it through 3 days of detox but then we couldn’t find him a bed in rehab anywhere in L.A. There are new rehabs being built with Prop 1 funding but that will take years.

Meanwhile, my son’s been passing out in my pkg lot and vomiting outside his driver’s side door. He’s also vomited down the steps on the back wall of my pkg lot that lead up to a convalescent home.

So, my tough love boundaries have now been pushed. Yes, I got a 3-year restraining order from my home ONLY, not from me. Yes, I petitioned and got a CARE Team for my son that outreaches to him in his car multiple times a week, but what happens when we can’t find him a bed in rehab in L.A.? Who’s fault is that?

My son’s CARE Team came out to see him this morning and said that the rehab in L.A. where my son made it 7 months and 19 days will take him back next week (after 2 months) if they have a bed.

But what about the vomit all over my condo pkg lot? My son’s too inxtoxicated to properly clean it. Should my neighbors have to step in and around it to get in and out their cars? No, they shouldn’t. The HOA, who’s the only only one that can legally have his car towed has not done so. So I’ve ordered a portable pressure washer.

Should I have done this? Yes or no?

When I turn on the Behavioral Panel's podcast on YouTube in the car, I find I suddenly feel much better and calmer. The podcast features the world's top body language and behavioral analysis experts. Three are from the South and one is from England. They show clips and analyze the words and behavior of killers, celebrities, and even politicians. The guys are very funny but they're also just highly intelligent, stable, grounded, and well-adjusted men.

So, after a barrage of irrational statements or nonsensical texts from my son, I like to turn them on and get back to reality that's based on some real insight, like this:

1. "Nonverbal cues often reveal more than spoken words."
2. "Context is crucial for accurately interpreting behavior."
3. "Micro-expressions can indicate true emotions quickly."
4. "Establishing rapport enhances communication effectiveness."
5. "Active listening is essential for understanding underlying messages."
6. "Consistency in behavior is a strong indicator of truthfulness."

~ Behavioral Panel

When I turn on the Behavioral Panel's podcast on YouTube in the car, I find I suddenly feel much better and calmer. The podcast features the world's top body language and behavioral analysis experts. Three are from the South and one is from England. They show clips and analyze the words and behavior of killers, celebrities, and even politicians. The guys are very funny but they're also just highly intelligent, stable, grounded, and well-adjusted men.

So, after a barrage of irrational statements or nonsensical texts from my son, I like to turn them on and get back to reality that's based on some real insight, like this:

1. "Nonverbal cues often reveal more than spoken words."
2. "Context is crucial for accurately interpreting behavior."
3. "Micro-expressions can indicate true emotions quickly."
4. "Establishing rapport enhances communication effectiveness."
5. "Active listening is essential for understanding underlying messages."
6. "Consistency in behavior is a strong indicator of truthfulness."

~ Behavioral Panel

This is the sixth time my son’s tried to detox in the last few weeks. Up until now he’s always left after day one or two. Now he’s finally earned the certificate of medical clearance so he can transfer to a rehab.

Today is Monday. He just did an intake with a new rehab and is waiting to hear back.

I’ve been telling my son not to wait until the last minute to try to find an available bed in rehab and to also have backup beds ready if he can. But my son—with his addict brain—has to do it his way, which was this last week:

Last Monday: He called the number on the back of his ins card, had an hour-long conversation with the guy (he’s made friends with him now), then never took him up on the available bed and decided to self-detox in his car

Last Tuesday: He said, “I’m sure there’ll be a bed somewhere tomorrow or by Friday” (there wasn’t)

Last Friday: He got turned down for detox in the new rehab at 4pm because of his history of DTs and a seizure, called the hospital with a detox, and they told him they had no more assessment appts and to call back on Monday at 8am

So I called back and asked for the detox coordinator, who said I could bring him in through the ER. We ended up waiting for three hours while they gave away beds to the people who’d actually made assessment appts.

While in the ER awaiting detox for my son, he and I heard a man’s conversation on speakerphone next to us. He was trying to get the girl on the other side of the waiting room (notice HE didn’t even want to sit next to her) into a rehab.

“They said she couldn’t come in because she has an arson case,” he told the woman on speakerphone.

“She has an ARSON CASE?” the woman yelled. “Of course they’re not going to let her in! She might get pissed off and burn the building down! If you had told me she had an arson case, I would’ve told you that no rehab was gonna take her.”

Just when my son and I had thought we’d seen it all. I don’t know which part was more shocking to me: that she’d committed arson, that now no one would even help her help herself, or that she was a female and had committed arson. Only in L.A. 🙄

I told my son, “At least you don’t have that problem.” He agreed.

Love and happy mothers day. Relatively better after a forced taper leading up to this, but absolutely terrified of both returning to the streets or programs.

I told him that I know he’s terrified but each time in detox and rehab has used those muscles and he’s stronger now. I also told him what I keep repeating to him:

Don’t take your eye off the goal and put one foot in front of the other. That’s how life is done.

Amid all of the pain, self-destruction, and chaos was this vow from my 27-year-old son. And no matter how deep into his addiction he is, he also doesn’t drink on my birthday.

My son is into his third day of detox at the hospital, which is usually the hardest day. He’s left on this day 5 times in the last few weeks without completing 3 nights for the certificate of medical clearance for rehab. He said he felt a lot better than he thought yesterday. “Just hunger and some brain fog.”

I just told the mother of his 2-year-old son Happy Mother’s Day and that I’m going to renew the registration for the car I gave her last year when hers died. I also pay for the insurance.

Grateful for what a good mother she is to my grandson, grateful for my mother, and grateful for all of the mothers on here to talk to.

Happy Mother’s Day!

My 27-year-old alcoholic son’s son is now 2 years old. His mother stayed with my son for four years during his alcoholism, but then left before their son was born.

When my son told me his girlfriend was pregnant, my first thought was this: She sees the tortuous pain my son goes through. Why on earth would she want to pass on the alcohol gene?

I pictured my grandson at 18 going from 0 to 100 with the drinking from the moment he took his first sip of alcohol, like my son did. He said he feels it deep in his genes and that it was like awaking something that immediately started screaming.

I’ll be 74 when my grandson turns 18, and I can’t imagine having to try to coach him through the chaos about AA. His mother seemed to enable my son when she lived with him. When he was too sick to get up and get his own alcohol, he’d ask her to go fetch it for him and she would. God, I hope and pray my grandson doesn’t become an alcoholic.

Today my youngest daughter and I are going to take my grandson to a park on the ocean. She likes being Auntie and taking him places with me. My son’s in detox right now, but if he wasn’t and he was sober, he’d be going with us. We used to have picnics at this park when he and sister were in high school and I still have the picnic blanket.

I see my son in my grandson. I see his sly, skeptical smile when he’s questioning whether what you’re telling him is true or not. He seems like he might thinks he knows better, like the time my son was strapped to my chest in his Baby Bjorn when he was just a few months old. I reached over to rinse off his pacifier under the kitchen faucet, and he grabbed it, put it in his mouth, and gave me that same sly smile. It was as if he was saying, “I don’t need you to do it. I can do it myself.”

I pray every day that he’ll one day say that about alcohol as an adult. Until then, I’ll hold him through DTs when he’s self detoxing and drive him back to rehab for emotional support. I love him more than life, itself, and am grateful to now have his son. He is Irish-Mexican and he is beautiful.

After 5 days of self detox in his car in my pkg lot, my son wants to go to treatment. He’s miserable, wants a bed to sleep in, and is trying to do the 30 days of treatment that I’m requiring of him in order to come back in the house.

The original deal was 9 months in rehab. My son made it almost 8 months but then relapsed, so now I’m requiring him to once again get sober.

We tried 90 days of “rehab” at my house 2 years ago when my son was 25. He came up with the idea of getting a BacTrack breathalyzer, which is an app-based remote alcohol monitoring service that shares a video-verified record of the person’s sobriety from your smartphone.

We agreed that my son would blow into the breathalyzer 3 times a day. He would also attend daily AA meetings by Zoom and weekly therapy. We had a lot of quality time with his new one-year old son when he visited. Unfortunately my son relapsed once a month and I ended up throwing him out the third time after an episode that involved the police.

After an 8-month stretch of living in his car, my son then made it 7 months and 18 days sober at rehab/residential rehab. What I came to find out was that I was testing him much more often than he was getting tested once he got to the residential side of rehab, so if he can make it another 30 days sober, we’ll try it again at home. Like Stevie Ray Vaughn said, l’ll live life by the drop and take what I get.

I’m sitting in my car in the shade in my pkg lot keeping an eye on my son, who’s asleep in the passenger seat. Today is day 5 of his self detox. He’s had one beer to taper so he doesn’t have another seizure like the one in 2024 when he’d been drinking a handle of whiskey a day. This time he’d only been drinking for five weeks since his seven month and eighteen day stay in rehab. He’d also tried to detox five times in facilities after he’d gotten thrown out.

Around St. Patrick’s Day, while still in residential rehab, my son drank a bottle of Fireball before going out to his car to drink a fifth of Jim Beam at 5AM. He then drove to my house around 9AM and asked his sister if she wanted to do anything. I asked her what he was doing there and then called him. I could tell he was drunk.

Not half an hour later, my son called me and said he’d had an accident and that the air bag had deployed. He was terrified. I asked him if he was okay and where he was. He responded with the name of a city that was an hour away and only started with the same letter as the name of our city. I knew he wasn’t really there.

He said he’d thought he’d hit a parked car at a rich person’s house and that people were taking pictures of his license plate, so he had to go. He then called me from a nearby supermarket and asked where I was. He’d thought I was going to pick him up, but I’d never said that and had no idea where he was. Somehow he ended up parked back in my parking lot, where he’d been living in his car when he went to rehab.

Back when I’d found my son a bed in his first of five rehabs that wasn’t court ordered, I’d managed to talk one of the staff into sending me the “secret” list of all rehabs in L.A. Los Angeles rehabs are way overcrowded, so she’d been told not to give out this list. “What you want to do is go down the list and call each one every day until a bed opens up,” she’d said. So I did and I’d found my son a bed.

But what does my son do now that I tell him he needs to find his own rehab from now on? He calls the number on the back of his state insurance card and tells me, “It’s super easy. You just call that number and they tell you which rehab has a bed.” Not only that, he ends up making friends with the guy. They talk often for over an hour at a time. My son calls it “informal therapy”.

So, which of us is the bigger idiot? I’m feeling like it might be me this time.

This morning I texted my son and asked how he was feeling after day 3 of feeling miserable and in hell. He texted back a one-word reply: stable. Then he forwarded me this text that he’d just received:

“Hello. Occupational therapy driver rehabilitation would like to schedule an appointment with you. Please contact our office by phone or text to schedule.”

In August 2024, my son had a seizure in the back of the car on the way to rehab. This particular rehab was a converted house and they had you check in at a building a few blocks away first. Then a rehab worker drove you to the rehab.

The paramedics transported my son to the nearby hospital, where a doctor reported to the DMV that my son had had a seizure. The DMV then immediately revoked my son’s driver’s license and required that a form be filled out by a doctor to medically clear him for driving. The form said the DMV may also require that my son take a class from occupational therapy driver rehabilitation (a third party to DMV). It is extremely hard to get your license back once you’ve had a seizure.

My son left rehab after seven days, showed up at my door while I wasn’t home, and his sister let him in. That was the beginning of 90-day rehab at my house with three BACTRAK breathalyzer blows a day, a daily AA Zoom, Ring cameras in my house, and therapy appts for my son. He relapsed once a month and I threw him out upon his third relapse that involved the police.

Three months later, my son had an EEG scan of his brain that had been ordered by the doctor before he would sign the DMV’s form. He also required a clean urine test that took my son another ten months to be able to produce after three months in another rehab.

Meanwhile, Occupational therapy driver rehabilitation just now finally responded after almost two years. They’re apparently in no hurry to put drunk drivers back on the street.

Today is day 3 of my son's plan that he's had for weeks to sabotage himself by running out of money for alcohol. As all alcoholics know, day 3 is the hardest. He's now living in his car in my parking lot and has been ever since I got a three-year restraining order to keep him out of my house.

I stopped by his car and asked if he wanted to go to Starbucks with me. He said no, that he was going to be sick and miserable as hell, and that he'd rather have a bagel and cream cheese from the donut shop across the street.

I brought it back for him and saw that he had a large water bottle, but that it wasn't one of the three I'd gotten him yesterday. His CARE Team from DMH had brought it to him along with some Liquid IV.

At lunch time I checked on my son again, told him I was gong to go back to the donut shop for a croissant sandwich, and asked him if he wanted one. At first he said no, that he was too nauseous. Then he decided some bread might help. Then he ended up asking for a ham croissant sandwich with jalapenos.

I brought it back for him and once again refused to buy him a "dripper" for his car battery that would drip a little occasional juice so his car wouldn't keep dying every week from not having been driven (the front right corner has been spit open like a can and the driver's side air bag has been deployed).

Hoping day 4 will be a little easier on him, and I know it's critical that a person going through withdrawals gets good nutrition to heal themselves. It's all I can do for my son right now. When he puts in effort, I put in effort.

After nine years of chronic alcoholism, forty-five trips to the hospital, fourteen 5150s, four 5250s, five stints in rehab, and five recent stints in detox, I've finally come up with a realistic plan to manage life with my alcoholic son. It's taken a year and a half to implement, but here it is...

First, I filed, and was granted, a three-year restraining order from my house ONLY, not from me. This is because his sister, the pets and I will not live in his chaos and will not be trapped inside the house with him, although we love him dearly.

Second, I petitioned for a new program here called CARE Court (there may be a similar program in other states). This way my son has a CARE Team though DMH (Dept of Mental Health) that outreaches to him three times a week in his car, where he's now living. They also do therapy sessions with him, offer to arrange and transport him back to rehab, and bring him water bottles, snacks, and even clothes if he needs them.

Third, I ordered two sets of cheap fabric drawers for the back corner of my living room, where my son's old quarters used to be when I tried taking him back in. That way, when the seasons change, he can trade me his summer clothes for his winter clothes.

I'm happy to charge his small portable generator once a week for him and pass anything else he asks for through the bars of my security gate so he can't try to get back in the house. Where does he live in his car, which he refuses to move, you ask? You guessed it. He lives in my parking lot.

My alcoholic son has brought me the most absolute joy and by far the most pain. Alanon teaches us not to check up on the alcoholic but as a mother, our instinct tells us protect our child when they put themselves in danger. I got a restraining order on him from the house last year and refuse to enable him but the pain doesn’t stop when I don’t know whether or not he’s safe. Anyone else having trouble with this boundary?