It began with staying out a little too late, lying about where he was at certain times, finding items in his room that didn't belong to him, and escalated into using drugs and alcohol. He has become more argumentative and less caring, dropping out of sports and then school a month after he turned 16 years old. We tried tightening up the rules on him, but this lasted only a short time until he'd convince us he'd do better, and then he'd be off and doing the same things again. We took him to counseling, and he just lied to the counselor, wasting everyone's time. He is an extremely good liar, although my husband says he sees right through him. I see him with emotional Mother's eyes, so want to believe him.
He recently started a new job at a local burger joint and we enrolled him in the adult learning center to continue his studies and get his G.E.D. His main reason for going there, we learned, was to get his driver's license, because he only lacked a few hours of driving behind the wheel to get when he dropped out of school. He was due to start his schooling Tuesday morning, and he had a couple days off work so went out with a couple of friends.
He came home yesterday morning from spending the night at a friend's house and wasn't acting right. He was wide awake and cooking hamburgers at 8:00 in the morning. I knew something was wrong, because normally he would be sleeping until noon or later, if he could get away with it. I told him I knew something was wrong and ask him what he'd taken to be up all night long? He insisted he hadn't been up all night long, but then after talking with him for a bit, he said that he had taken some Xanax. That didn't make sense for him staying up all night, but he said he'd just taken it shortly before coming home. I found out from his friend he'd taken 3, which wasn't life threatening but should make him very sleepy in a short time, so I made sure he ate and drank something, to at least help buffer the effects. When I was in the other room I heard them talking about what they'd done the night before. Seems they had taken another drug, an over-the-counter cold medication called "Coricidin". I found out if you take an overdosage of it, it causes a tripping effect, such as hallucinations and inability to walk right. My son described one of the side effects of 'walking like a penguin'. They thought it was quite amusing to watch each other do this, along with suddenly forgetting where you are, and thinking you have to go do something totally out of character.
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