I (28m) live with my two younger brothers Connor (27m) and Andrew (25m). We live down the street from our cousin Nathan (25m) who lives with our friend Cam (24m) and Cam’s girlfriend (22f). Recently our cousin has been acting out and fighting with everyone and we’ve all gotten to the end of our ropes.
Nathan is a drug addict. His drug of choice used to be oxy, which got him fired from his last job. He has currently been smoking meth/heroin with his Dad (Wayne, 50m) and our other uncle Erik (46m) in his room and has been making excuses for why it smells like drugs and as to why he’s been showing the signs of drug use.
We have all tried talking to him so very many times about going to the hospital or similar and he always states that he is fine, and gives us a decent sounding plan of his…which he then falters on. It’s to the point where (having our uncles go over to smoke with him) he’s bringing over tweakers and is still starting fights and Cam just wants him out. He isn’t listening to us anymore and he’s just covering everything up.
To give us some leverage we got some drug residue tests and we plan on confronting Nathan when they come back positive and telling him he has x amount of time to move out. He also hasn’t been acting like a tweaker this week and last… it’s been very confusing..but we still plan on doing the drug tests.
With this information, is there anything we should do, could do, or shouldn’t do? Nathan has been straining all of our relationships by lying and Cam honestly just wants to not get kicked out of the apartment. Any opinions?
**Tl;dr: My cousin is a drug addict who’s been lying about it, we’re drug testing soon to provide leverage and I wanted to ask for tips/tricks/opinions about…anything.**
3 comments
Don’t get him in the hospital. Try to get him to go to substance abuse treatment classes / psychological care.
But if he doesn’t want to go, you won’t be able to force him.
I’m not sure what leverage the drug test gives you unless you plan on bringing that up to apartment staff which I can’t tell you if thats a good idea if you still want to stay. Just get everyone together and tell him its not working out and he needs to leave. Give him reasonable time, he deserves that unless things start to escalate.
Nathan isn’t the person you know and love anymore. Get that in your head. Whoever it is now will hurt you and everyone who cared for him to feed the addiction.
Cam and their girlfriend need to move out. You don’t want to be living in an apartment where meth or heroin is being smoked in the next bedroom over.