Advice for a Slacker

If he likes to read maybe he will like writing. Try to get him interested in journalisim courses if he afford them or maybe writing articiles for a newspaper/journal in the area (if he is any good at it). Granted alot of writers have been known for their substance abuse but he could at least pull himself out of the gutter...

However my main reaction is to just let him rot on his own. Most drug addicts wont change unless THEY themselves want to. I have a sister who is totally fucked up on speed and right now is in rehab by court order and all she thinks about is getting high again. She has no regard for life or her own personal happyness. My parents spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on her monthly with psycologists, psyciatrists, programs etc...She pretends to go and milks more "spending money out of them" The only thing keeping her sober (for the time being) is the threat of jail time. We live in a nice house in a nice niehboorhood, gone to the best private schools, she has travled to Europe almost every summer, and has never gone hungry (a very privelaged life I know) but she throws it in everyons face and hates my parents for trying to provide for her....

If he has no personal interest in self betterment don't get sucked down with him. I'm watching my parents die over a stupid daughter who in my opinion is best off as far away from the family as possible, It's not worth the effort on your part to try and change his life. Offer him what you can but don't jepordize your life or your families wellbeing (if you have one) in doing so.

Tell him how fucked up he is for taking advantage of his parents the way he is. Ask him if he really thinks his folks wouldn't rather have that money for their own needs/desires. Ask him who the fuck he is to decide that his low-income parents have no right to what little money they do have.

The bottom line is- he has determined that he is content with living off his folks, even people might look at him and ask "how can you live like this? How can you take your folks' money like that?" He's aware that they're low-income. He knows they can't afford it. He doesn't give a shit enough to do anything about it, and NOTHING is going to make him feel differently unless someone he truly admires tells him he fucking up and needs to do things differently. Even then, it's a slim chance, since he's already behaving in a VERY selfish manner- "What's most important is that I live a life of meaningless fun, even if my folks can't go out to dinner once a week because they're paying for my Top-Ramen when I could be working".

The sad fact is that the vast majority of people in a similar situation are not going to change their habits until they have no other choice, and even then, some might not change. If his folks would cut him off, he'd have to make SOME change.

If he weren't consuming what meager funds his "low-income parents" have, I'd say "It's his life. He's going to fuck it up if he really wants to, no matter what anyone else says to him. Cut your losses before he's turning to you for money, too", but the parents' money is the lynchpin of my feelings on this subject.

BUT, if, as you suggest you are, I were someone he'd listen to, I wouldn't bother with the whole "you have a responsibility/cut out the pot/get a life" angle. Instead I'd do my damndest to give his folks a break and MAYBE get through to him through them. Either talk to them and tell them they should cut him off (sure, give him a month to get his act together, but give him a deadline and STICK TO IT), or I'd talk to him once about the need to actually be productive enough to feed himself and maybe be able to enjoy other things in life as a result of having a paycheck. ONCE. He's not deaf. If that didn't make an immediate impact which showed REAL results, I'd stand there between him and his Playstation and say-

"Sorry pal, I could like you if you weren't such an asshole to your folks. They are broke, and I'm SURE they would MUCH rather have a few bucks to buy a nice dinner once in a while, but because you're their flesh and blood, they feel an obligation to not let you go hugry, which they are doing since you WON'T GET OFF THE COUCH AND FEED YOURSELF! YOU ARE TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THEIR SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO THEIR DETRIMENT, all because you HAVE NONE OF YOUR OWN. I'm not mumbling. I'm not being unclear. I'm also not gonna watch you be a shithead to the people who gave you life. As long as you're treating your folks like this, I'm gone. Grow the fuck up, get a fucking job, and actually try giving your folks money for a change."

Then I'd tell him to call me when things are changed. If he values your opinion, this might get through. If you're kidding yourself and he doesn't REALLY value you, he'll continue taking the easy way out, since it's not costing him anything by having you walk. Either way, it's not your job to do more than express your feelings (or mine) once, maybe twice. After that, you're wasting your breath.

Good luck. I applaud you for making the effort, but I've seen one too many others with similar outlook, and they just don't give a shit as long as they don't have to. The moment he HAS to get a life, he'll either get a life, or be SO selfish that he'd rather steal to feed himself. If that's the case, you're wasting your time, anyway.

Sorry I'm not more positive, but I've HAD a male relative who was living off his mom at 24, and who didn't give a shit, and a mom who was too damned attached to "her baby boy" to actually insist that he do something like get a fucking job or at least help out around the house that his mom was damned close to losing because she couldn't afford the house AND a 24 year old bum whose friends were always in the fridge. SHE wasn't going to say anything to him, because she (still) thinks actually telling him to help around the house would be "emotional abuse" (see what the 90s has produced???).

Tell this one to stop fucking his parents and get a fucking job. Hell, working two days a week will give him as much money as they're giving him. It's not like he'll have to give up his 5 days/week of video games and being stoned. He doesn't deserve a dime from his folks, since he's not willing to help himself.

Peace

T

From my own experiences with marijuana and logical and emotional disassociation, he just needs the pattern broken so that he gets perspective on himself and how his actions affect those he cares about. Habitual pot use makes it really easy to feel "normal" when you have disassociated from what you know you need to deal with to be happy and healthy. Marijuana can be used as a tool to break that pattern because it pushes your perception to a slightly altered state that can easily be remembered. On the other hand it can become a psychological addiction when you build up a fantasy world inside the marijuana experience that distracts you from what is really going on in your life. Chances are most major habitual pot users started out with it for self medication and didn't know better than to regulate not only how much they use but how they use it. It is possible that if you bring his awareness to how and why he is using marijuana that he will listen, unfortunately if he does not listen then it will only make the problem worse by forcing him to medicate more heavily to disassociate from the awareness you brought to him. It is a double edged sword, in my opinion the best thing you could do is to find a way to get him perspective on his life in a way that doesn't point to you trying to force him to deal with his problems. Example works wonders especially if he respects and looks up to you already. There probably isn't a single one of us that couldn't use more perspective on our own lives. Take that journey yourself and let him be a part of it, he might just follow your suggestion through example alone. I only caution one thing about your apparent path in this persons life, if you get too attached to your perceptions about what he is capable of, you may be let down real hard in the end. To take this journey you must let him find his own path and in his own time, give him example as suggestion not as an expectation. Remember that he is extremely suggestable in this stage of his life, all you have to do is be subtle in suggesting the right things in the right ways and he will learn from it. A good book to read in terms of how to use language and trance states is Monsters and Magical Sticks (Theres no such thing as hypnosis?) by Steven Heller. Since he is constantly putting himself into a marijuana trance you could easily slip in unconscious suggestions that would make his habbit have positive repercussions in his life. Saying things like "I bet you don't think about reasons to get a job every time you smoke pot" will force his mind to think about getting a job every time he lights up. The don't in that sentence is crucial, it is what helps you slip past his conscoius defenses because he'll most likelly agree with you, but his unconscious mind just hears "think about reasons to get a job every time you smoke pot".

Sounds to me more like a case of self medication to deal with the environment. Maybe the setting is more to blame than the drug?