You are doing the right thing. You cannot give him a car if he is still drinking. If something happens, you would have a tough time living with yourself and your decision.
My loved one who had/has problems with drinking and drugs got a bike and bikes to his two jobs. Perhaps that may be a solution for someone who needs some transportation for work? I’m proud of him and how hard he’s working and know it gladdens his dad’s heart to see him on a good path, finally. It has been a rough bunch of years.
@fullmom:
You are doing the right thing, one of the things about any addiction is that the person has to be willing to help themselves, and often that comes with having to face the consequences (I know, it is a cliche, and the sad reality is that tough love with some addicts, like the friend from school who died, or my cousin who despite tough love, and being cut off from the family helping him, has spent 25 years drifting from place to place, he will get help from friends, then drift back into drugs again). Part of what your son has to learn is that there is no such thing for most addicts as ‘safe drinking’, and perhaps if he has a job he loves and is paying the price of not being able to drive, he will realize this. It is good he has a girlfriend who understands, what he also has to hopefully have is people around him who can support him, too, including not drinking around him and not letting him drink, friends who think ‘what is the harm of 1 drink’ havve inadvertently hurt someone trying to stay sober.
You did the right thing with the car, and it isn’t about tough love, it would be like allowing someone to drive the car who has a history of seizures or who can’t see well at all, it is almost more about protecting others, it isn’t about witholding the car out of tough love, it is about not putting keys into the hands of someone who is quite honestly a threat to others…and I can tell you from brutal experience from several years on a rescue squad, that often drivers driving drunk end up seriously hurting or killing others and they walk out without a scratch…at the very least, if he gets his license back, and drives drunk, you tried to prevent others from being hurt; at one accident scene I was at a 17 year old kid was driving a family car drunk and got into a terrible accident, several people were killed, and his parents came to the scene (it was literally a 1/4 mile from their house) and the look on their faces is something I will never forget and pray to God that myself or others never have that same look…
I had a DWI on my 19th birthday and dropped out of college to pay fines, save for insurance, etc. I had purchased my own car and dad continued paying for the majority of my college when I returned after a semester. I lost my license for 12 months and it was tough (I biked to work quite a bit), I never thought of asking dad to pay anything related to the DWI, doubt he would have, but I never felt like he should. I still drank afterwards at parties, sometimes to excess, but never, ever did I or do I drink and drive since that one time. I graduated college and had a great career and still drink moderately today.
I think each situation is different. On the one hand it seems to me that if he has a drinking problem then I understand getting him to stop entirely (but I do not really think that just because someone is an idiot and drinks/drives means they can never drink again as they are not capable of repeating this mistake - do the stats say that if you get one DWI you are destined to get another?). Ultimately, I think I agree with your answer though as I really do not think he should be expecting or asking you to buy him anything except the occasional present for Xmas/bdays if that is your custom. He is 24 so surely it is up to him to provide for himself.
@yearstogo – at least one study ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21469018 ) has shown that people who are caught driving drunk have done it hundreds of times for every time they are caught. IMO, after years of paying attention, getting a single DWI means that someone is an active alchoholic.
@dmd77:
Your stats go along with what I remember, that for every person who is pulled over for a DUI the one and only time they attempted to drive drunk, a ton more have driven drunk but did not get caught until they had the DUI. In the ops case it sounds like they believe their S has a drinking problem and that is why he got the DUI, not that he is a casual drinker who got caught driving after he had too much (the difference being if someone is an addict, the threat of getting busted for DUI or whatnot won’t stop them from drinking, whereas someone who is a social drinker can be deterred.
Thing is, even with all the emphasis of DWI/DUI, with the cops cracking down, etc, the odds of getting pulled over isn’t necessarily that high and people can get away while driving impaired or drunk, especially given that many people even when over the limit aren’t the car weaving all over or the person driving at 20mph on the highway kind of stereotype, and cops don’t have the resources to routinely have drunk driving checkpoints and the like, so normally they relie on someone displaying the erratic driving that can be a tipoff to dui/dwi.
Thanks for staying strong, @fullmom. I’ve seen what ignoring the problem can do, and it’s not pretty.
It sounds like you’ve found a way to give him unconditional support and love, but with boundaries you can live with.
Keep trying to make sure the message of love comes through. It’s so hard to see someone we love struggle with an addiction and/or a mental illness and/or other challenges.
Keep the faith.
You can support him in other ways, like funding his Uber account with $$ gained from the car sale.