My 19 year old son has chosen homelessness vs recovery and my heart is breaking.

His words are always, "I'm not ready" for recovery. This is the lowest I've seen him, but it's still not low enough. I feel like there is no coming back from this. It's been 6 years of fighting this disease, and it only gets worse. He's given up, and so have I. I'm just basically waiting for the call that he's dead, in a coma, or in jail.

Update: I should write a book about all of this. I failed to mention that our our son was pretty much a drug baby. We adopted him and his sister at birth.

The birth mother was an active drug user before she knew she was pregnant. Her own father died from a heroin overdose. Her brother was a drug user as well. This was almost 21 years ago when we adopted our daughter and then our son less than a year later.

We only recently got back in contact with the birth mother after pretty much being no contact for years. She has been clean for years now.

Upon my son's first meeting with his birth family, he told her how he is a drug addict and living in a sober living house. She felt really bad and had really hoped that having him and his sister be adopted thar it would have broken the cycle, but it obviously hasn't.

When our son was arrested a week ago, she knew about it before we did because she has our kids' names where she gets an alert if their names come up in any public forum. She set this up a while back before we had come back im to each other's lives.

When we told her he was now homeless, she asked how she could help, and we said we weren't sure how because he needed to be willing.

Well, the brother of the birthmother, who is also a recovered addict and now a drug counselor and pastor, asked if he could come and see if he could help.

He drove 4 hours to go find our son and convince him to go back with him and do round the clock detox for 3 days in which he, the birth mother, birth grandmother, birth aunt and a couple of their friends who are in recovery would take care of him and get him detoxed so he can go into a 6 month residential treatment program that has a 6 month after care program to help him get a job and going to meetings regularly.

He found our son who was high, bloodied (from falling) and disheveled, and got him to agree to come back with him.

So, that's the update. His "kin" who have only known him for less than 6 months have taken him in, and he is off the streets. The whole thing is kind of remarkable when you think about it.

We'll see what happens.

Update: February 1st, 2025; My son is 5 days clean and is supposed to start Salvation Army's recovery/work program in Fresno, next week. I spoke with his biological uncle tonight and found out that during those 3 or 4 days that my son was homeless, he injected himself with heroin for the first time. This is like a nightmare that won't end. I'm really trying to stay positive, but it is so hard.