Sitting in the ER with my Son

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.