How do I keep my grandson from dying from huffing solvents?

Oh sweetie all I can say is I’m so sorry you are going through this sorrow. We ached for our children and then we ache for our grandchildren. Do you think he would go to any twelve-step program?

@Aster, that is a tough one. I went through a similar thing with my step-daughter. Heroin. At one point she was living on the street with her boyfriend and I don’t like to think what she was doing for money. They were living with us for a while, but it didn’t stop the use. It did relieve my wife of all her jewelry, though. Eventually we had them arrested for the theft. That was the first step in a long road to recovery for her. She is better now. Been clean for a couple years, finishing school and starting a new career…she is a real person again. But the hard part, as the family, is that there really isn’t anything you can do. You can tell them it is bad, but unless they understand what is driving them and more importantly, they actually want to stop, there is absolutely nothing you can do. You can talk to them, but you really can’t yell at them and expect them to change. We went to Nar-anon meetings (for the families of addicts) and all the stories were identical: Child had problem, parents or grandparents tried to help, the more they helped, the worse the child got, eventually the parents/grandparents told the kids they loved them but couldn’t go through it anymore and the kids had to go. At that point the story has two endings: the child comes back some time later and thanks them, telling them that was the best thing they could ever have done, or the child dies. Your case is, in some ways, worse because the inhalants he is using are legal and really aren’t punished if he is caught. And yes, they can kill you. One of my wife’s friends got hooked on glue and it ended up killing him. Now he was huffing frequently…many times a day for a long time, but it caught up with him.
If I were in your situation, I would talk to him and see if you can get to the “why” of the huffing. What is he trying to do? Is he trying to numb some pain from his life? Is he just avoiding reality in a haze? But this conversation needs to be done carefully or you will alienate him further from you.

Where does your younger daughter live? could she take over his care/housing?

The whole thing sounds pretty horrid for everyone.

It might be useful to discuss this with your doctor – and perhaps to attend some Nar-Anon meetings.

@BellaB my daughter lives about 20 miles from his dorm and does everything for him plus has 3 jobs and 2 fine teenagers. He isn’t allowed in her house.
@seawulf575 I think he is trying to numb the pain of his horrid life. And the love/hate with his mother.Plus, he is so worried about her; she does meth and is knocked around by her “boyfriend.”
@janbb. No; twelve steps are for those who wish to change. He wants to change a little bit; no sign, no odor, no nothing of weed for. 3 weeks now. Odd, but I think he may hate me. Not sure why. Because his mother has instilled in him the unfairness that we have so much more than they ever had. She sells or walks away from all the gifts we’ve given them. She even sold a car for five dollars.

I’d definitely recommend you attend a Nar-Anon meeting and talk to other people trying to cope with similar situations.

Addict behavior, so sad. He needs rehab and therapy, or a girlfriend who won’t put up with the bad choices. We jave to overcome our past at some point, but it has to be his choice.

Just reading your details again, I would remove all the solvents and paint thinners from your house to at least make it harder for him to huff when he’s with you.

Help him find something he’s personally responsible for, maybe with his aunt’s help. Something like a pet? Or a group that needs help? Something that absolutely won’t judge him, but needs him.

It sounds minor, but I’ve seen it work a couple times as a first step. Basically you have something outside yourself that’s counting on you and that’s a greater motivator to improve than self preservation. He may not see a lot of worth in himself, but it sounds like he recognizes that others are trying for him.

Like everyone has said above, no one can make the decisions but him, but at the same time, breaking those patterns that lead to addiction is a lot easier with something to replace it with. That’s probably why the aunt is in support of the vaping and says to go with praise. He needs new patterns and people outside himself to do well for.

In NZ there is a group for family and friends of alcoholics, I can’t think what it is called but I imagine there is something in the US very similar.

Find an Addict Support Group in your area. I’m sorry to say, but there is nothing you personally can do for him other than offer support and perhaps offer alternative activities.

Kid wants to get high… Perhaps supply him with weed. It might get them off huffing and you can work down from there.

I do not smoke weed anymore. I have no skin in the game. I am just trying to think of a less lethal thing they could do to satiate their desire to get high.

Start asking him for help. I don’t know what kind of help you find useful where you live.) Around here it could be: shovel the walk, cut the grass, remove tree branches, split wood, ... anything. To repay his efforts, take him to a restaurant, or game center , or other place he likes. This will start giving him something else to do – and even look forward to doing.

And get rid of the solvents. There is no reason to make it easy for him. .

One caution with the Nar-Anon meetings: They are much like AA meetings. They are places where you go and can talk about your problems and fears. But it is pretty frowned upon to give advice to someone. If you are looking for someone to give you ideas, you might go and make friends that you can talk to out of the meeting, but that is about it.

@Aster it sounds like your grandson is old enough and wise enough to see the score as it is, but too young to feel like he has any power over his life. I like @LuckyGuy ‘s suggestion of giving him things to do, but try to also come up with things you can do with him. Even if they aren’t chores. Ask him to help you with something. Take him somewhere for some purpose (shopping, park for walking the dog, etc). Don’t smother him, but increase the time you spend with him. This does several things. He can’t huff while he is with you, so it minimizes his time for that, and it gives him more of a chance to see what normal looks like in a life. You allow him time to come to trust you more (I suspect he doesn’t trust many people right now) and maybe he will open up to you. You could even work in a conversation during one of these times where you voice your own concern for his mother…engage him in ideas on how to help. You can get him where he is not alone in a crowd. But again…don’t push TOO hard. Trust is not something that happens overnight. Push too hard and you could push him away.

@seawulf575 gets it. Note I did not say “Give him cash for helping around the house.”
Pay him back by doing some activity together. You both will win.

Don’t let him play with matches while he’s doing it.
(In other words, good luck!)

He can’t “do things around the house” because he’s in jr college now. Majoring in nursing. His dorm is 20 miles from our house and it has many activities going on. Plus, a gorgeous girl, Brooke Shields style honestly, has invited him to a 2300 member Baptist church and, as we speak, he is there. He said he was bored and wanted to see where it’s located. His grandfather and his aunt are in town constantly shopping and doing stuff and, as we were speaking, his grandfather called and he practically hung up on me! I bet you his GF takes him to eat. That is one thing his GF, my ex, always loved to do and does all the time=eat out. If he joins that church they will have so many activities he won’t know what to choose but his classes will come first. I have read that some people get bored with vaping and huffing when they begin making friends. His dorm is so fancy he uses an elevator and his room has a private, full bath and walk in closet. This will cost me! He will very rarely be here at our house. His aunt is planning for him to go away to a church camp for three months but he prefers a campus job for the 3 month summer session.

Well, it sounds like real life might become so attractive that he will stop substance abuse on his own. He sounds like he is on a good path.

Do you think the church is using “Brooke” as bait? That is a serious question.

If she is real this might be a good way to calm him down and get him involved in other activities. .

ˆˆˆˆ^ The church as so many members I don’t know if they’d approach her like that. And I don’t know just how much she knows about his past. He has only been in the chair twice and she was at the reception desk the whole time. But Baptists have always been taught to get new members so who knows?

I tried it a few times during my teens and all I can tell you is that it took a really bad mental and physical experience (trip) to make me decide that it was not something I wanted to do. After that I refused to even consider it even though I had friends that did it and continued to do it.

Unfortunately, I have to also say that I had a very good friend at the time who did not quit. It didn’t kill him but it really screwed him up. He went from a very intelligent, intense and inquisitive person to someone who had trouble remembering to put his pants on in the mornings in a very short time frame. Not quite the drooling idiot but he never recovered.

While I went off to college he drifted around town doing menial jobs, enough to get high regularly, and when after a couple of years his parents got tired of his shit and kicked him out of their house he ended up moving to Austin. Last I heard, from a mutual friend, (and this was about 1976) he was on the street and living in and out of anywhere he could mooch a bed for a few days. I never heard from him again. I still sometimes wonder….

I would point out that it was peer pressure that got me to try it, not something I thought of on my own. My friends did it and I jumped off the same cliff. We used to get pot from Mexico (I grew up in Texas) it was cheap, ten bucks an ounce, and easily available and that is what we did. There was a time in the late 60’s when the government cracked down and the supply dried up for a while. We were going to get high no matter what and cutting off our pot began our experimenting with other drugs and pills (and paints, and aerosols) and alcohol. You had to be 18 to buy alcohol at the time and we all had older friends and siblings so we got whatever we could afford.

As to why we needed to get high, I can’t speak for the others but in hindsight it was, in my case, more from boredom than anything else. School was not that bad. My home life was pretty good. It was not really an escapism thing, just something to while away the hours. And, it mostly occurred at the homes of friends whose parents were either gone a whole lot or just didn’t give a shit about their kid. Now those guys, maybe it was to mask the pain or to escape or to feel included in something I don’t know. But at the same time, I was not part of the high school “in” crowd, I had a limited number of people who were my friends and was definitely socially awkward so that could have been a factor.

Going away to college got me into a completely different group of friends. Maybe it was the new group dynamics, maybe it was the increased activity, maybe the maturity level. I was busy with school and extracurricular activities and while we still did drugs it was no where near the intensity that I had been in high school and pot once again became the drug of choice.

After a while, that too faded until it is now just the occasional pleasurable activity. (Think John Denver: “And I have to say it now It’s been a good life all in all. It’s really fine to have a chance to hang around, and lie there by the fire, and watch the evening tire, while all my friends and my old lady sit and pass the pipe around….)

@Aster I asked the question because some woman tried to “recruit” me ages ago. It seemed innocent enough. I was eating by myself in a restaurant and a small group was nearby. In the group there was a woman about my age who kept looking at me. At one point she got up from her table and walked over to me. She called my by a wrong name. When I said she was mistaken she then apologized but started asking questions: what was I doing there?, was I new in town? how long would i be in town? etc.
After talking for a while she invited me for a Sunday breakfast – at the church!

I thanked her, but didn’t accept the offer.

Wednesday night he actually rode the bus to church. He didn’t tell me anything about it but my daughter was told he ate hotdogs with the pastor’s wife. He also played table tennis and basketball there.
I put half a dozen cans of spray solvent in the trash this morning. But the previous owner left so many cans when she left.
He also spoke with a counselor for 1.5 hours and told me ït was “even a worse experience than I thought it would be.” My daughter took him so I didn’t tell her he said that.