My son is twenty-six, he's using, and he lives in my basement, and I'm the reason he can.

I know every word of what I'm supposed to do. I've been to the meetings. I have the pamphlet about enabling in a drawer in my kitchen. I can recite the part about how love without boundaries is not love.

And every night I leave the porch light on.

He's been using for about five years. Two treatment programs, the second one I paid for. He was clean for eleven months in 2023 and he worked at a warehouse and he came to dinner on Sundays and I let myself believe it.

What people who tell you to set a boundary don't explain is what the boundary actually is. It's not a word. It's a specific night in February where it's twenty-six degrees and you know where he'd sleep.

My husband and I don't agree. He says we're killing him slowly. He might be right. He also stopped going to the meetings a year ago and I haven't, which tells you something about both of us.

My daughter, who is thirty and has two kids, has stopped visiting. She said, calmly, "I'm not bringing my children into a house where that's happening." She's not wrong either.

So I'm losing her to keep him, and keeping him might not even be keeping him.

I'm not asking whether to put him out. I've been asked that by four professionals and I know the answer and I'm not doing it. I'm asking the parents who did it: what happened? Did he come back? And the ones who didn't — are you okay?