Still in Jail

J's girlfriend wasn't able to get everything done before the bank closed for her to get money from his account with a Power of Attorney that he had drawn up from jail so I guess he's coming home today.

Here is more info to get us to the present: After the OVI, J's lease was up and he realized his current lifestyle had to change so he asked to move in with me. My husband and I had divorced in 07' and then we reconnected in 08' and started dating off and on through the year. We had sold our house and I was living in a condo. After J moved in he seemed to be doing better. He got a job that lasted for a couple of months.

It's odd because I try to remember timelines and what happened when and it is blurry. Anyway, I bought a house in August of 08' - it has 5 bedrooms and my friends thought it was strange because I didn't really need the space. I had decided to get a roommate to help with expenses and she moved in during Dec. 08'. My mother became ill in Nov. 08' and went to a nursing home where she was having extreme problems adapting. I made the decision to quit my job and have her move in with me so I could take care of her. I wasn't used to the caretaking role and it was quite stressful with checking her blood sugar levels 4 x daily, giving shots, cooking, helping her in all other ways. She also is a negative, demanding person and bitter about the way her life has turned out (that's a whole different story).

My husband proposed to me on Christmas Eve and we remarried in Jan. 09' and went to Dominican Republic for our honeymoon.

My mother rapidly got better and then in Mar. 09' my son was pulled over in his car again (I think this time he had forgotten to get his registration updated) and was taken to jail for drug possession (3 felonies & 4 misdemeanors). I bailed him out (the 1st of two times) and got a well known criminal defense attorney for him.

Back in Feb. 09' I had decided to do some traveling before I started working again and booked two trips with an adventure travel group. The first trip was to Egypt & Jordan in March for 2 1/2 weeks and then I would be home for 10 days and leave to go to Peru for 3 weeks (where I would hike for 3 days on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu). I think it was meant to be for me not to be around for a while!

Meanwhile, the attorney was able to get the court to agree that J needed rehab in lieu of conviction, but first he'd have to complete a pre-rehab phase that consists of going twice a week for 1 hour to a class, calling a hotline to see if he'd have to take a random drug screen each day and attend at least 3 AA or NA meetings per week.

We live over 1/2 hr. away so my life consisted of driving J to all of this (including court hearings) for about 2 months. He was doing well and because I needed to find a job we decided to give him an old car and he got the court to approve restricted driving privileges (for medical and court) and had an interlock device put on the car (the thing you have to breath into to get the car started).

I told him that I would drive him other places as necessary and that if he felt weak (i.e. wanting to take drugs to please talk with me about it and we would make sure to get him help). His girlfriend would drive them around some (to friend's, to go swimming, etc.) and there were a few other guy friends that they'd go out with. WHAT WAS I THINKING....He wanted to drink in place of smoking pot/doing drugs and initially I remember telling he and his girlfriend after this happened that he would need to change all of his friends, not drink, etc. But gradually, it worked its way in! He then started wanting to drive the car to run errands and he'd have his AA NA meeting dates/times in the car in case he got stopped so that he could say he was on the way to one of those.

Then at the end of May a "47 yr. old friend" of his took he and his girlfriend out to a bar and J said that around midnight he realized his friend had been drinking heavily (which was not like him supposedly) and J told him to stop drinking since he was driving and to go find a girl to talk to. Around 1:30am he couldn't find his girlfriend (she had decided to leave and walk to a friend's house down the street in her drunken stupor) and he found his friend out front in his vehicle starting to drive away. J stopped him and told him to park the car (he was worried that he would kill someone or himself) and instead of calling us he made the ill-fated decision to drive.

He called me at a little after 2am and said he was being pulled over and left his phone on and I could hear everything. He sounded very sober and took the breathlizer test and passed that but they charged him with an OVI anyway after administering the field sobriety tests. The police took his phone in the cruiser with them and it was still on and I could hear everything and it was emotional torture for me at the time!! I bailed him out early that morning from jail. My thinking at the time was that he was being more responsible than usual by not drinking too much and his intention was to protect his friend. His attorney was able to get that dropped to a "reckless op".

He found some odd jobs, doing roofing for a week or a few days and I would suggest he look on the computer and really work at finding a job (put in 3-4 hours a day) but he was not motivated. He would worry that no one would want to hire him because this stuff was pending.

J has a sleep disorder (the same one that I have) Periodic Limb Movement Disorder and Restless Leg Syndrome and he was prescribed Klonipin (a benzo), the same thing that I take at night. He would stay up late with his girlfriend and then sleep until about noon. Then in mid August he had stayed up all night and seemed intoxicated/drugged the following morning and as I questioned him about it he kept saying he had just had a few drinks last night and hadn't slept so that was why he was acting that way.

He insisted on having to go out and run some errands and I kept saying but how will you get the car started if you've been drinking. Well he left and came back a couple of hours later. WHAT THE HELL was I doing allowing him to drive the car???

Then at the end of August this happened again and I again kept telling him not to drive - but he did. I was out at the grocery and got a phone call from him saying he had a dilemma and then he put the police officer on the phone. It was the oddest sensation because in the past my heart would have lurched, but this time I remember I didn't feel ANYTHING! I started to drive home and remember crying, but differently this time. It was more of a moaning from the soul!

He had stopped at a gas station and they had called the police thinking he was intoxicated. The police watched him in his car in the parking lot for 15 minutes and when they approached he had been passed out the whole time so they took him in for a urine test and wanted to bring him home. When he got home I told him that I was going to have to decide if he could live with me and I needed a couple of days to think it through so I packed a bag for him and took he and his girlfriend over to her house. He was still drugged.