My son Michael is 17 and he has gone off the rails.
Well don't tell me I can drop out
if I'm not gonna be able to!
Michael refuses to go to school.
I can drop out with your permission!
But I'm not gonna give you permission.
I should be dead right now!
Why should you be dead?
Because I hate school!
Makes me wanna kill myself!
Mike lies about everything.
Where he's going, who he's with,
about the color of the sky.
Michael is smoking mariajuana.
In the very beginning I went in his room
and it stunk like skunk.
He denied it.
It's not good for your brain.
I stopped smoking mariajuana.
It's a prescription to help people with anxiety.
You see one side of the story.
Michael at one time was extremely sweet, loving.
But he became angry about everything.
Mom, it is stressing me out!
He will come right in front of us.
You should let me do what I wanna do!
Oh, I'm so angry I could hit something right now!
Michael got caught with a vape at school.
He was suspended for 10 days.
We also found them in his room.
My son has every excuse in the book.
It's not his, I was set up.
Somebody gave it to me.
The principal had something against me
and she flipped the whole situation on me.
Some kid would get caught smoking weed at school
and she'd flip the whole situation on me
and make like I look like smoke pot at school.
I've never brought pot to school!
I've never brought nicotine to school!
I did bring a vape to school
but I never brought nicotine to school!
When I confront him,
he tells me I'm crazy and I'm a psycho.
It's tearing all of us apart.
If I need to blow up on someone
then I do it.
You don't care that you hurt other people?
Well, maybe it will get them to understand
that they're doing something wrong to me.
And I can tell you right now people are doing me wrong.
One of my greatest fears
is that Mike is going to follow through
on the threats that he's made when he's been angry.
Hurting someone, maybe even killing someone.
I'm afraid that he really has the potential to do that.
It is really terrifying.
Okay, what's your theory about this?
I mean you've raised this child.
You've seen him evolve.
And then we've seen him enraged where he's yelling
like a two year old would.
It doesn't make sense,
there's no logic to what he's saying.
No.
He's just venting.
What do you think's going on?
I wish I had the answer to that.
And I know you don't or you wouldn't be here.
Correct.
You would be using the answer and solving the problem.
But you have to have some theory.
I think that he's very unhappy.
I think that possibly
this mariajuana that he's been using
that he states he hasn't done in quite a while,
I think that it's affected his brain.
You understand that mariajuana
on an undeveloped brain is not a good combination?
Absolutely not.
And the research is not fuzzy about that at all.
No, it's very direct.
It's very clear.
I can give you 150 studies.
Literally 150 studies today
that you can give to him.
I'm sure he wouldn't bother to read them.
No I'm sure he wouldn't.
He doesn't take no very well.
He does not take no at all.
But he doesn't take yes very well either.
What does make him happy?
Is there something you could do
that he would say, "Life is great?"
If I just let him do whatever he wants
whenever he wants, however he wants,
and I give him money,
he would probably be happy for a while anyway.
Do you really think so?
For a while.
But I don't think that anything will
really, truly make him happy.
What does he do for fun?
He doesn't do anything that I know of.
He lays, when he's home, he's in bed,
laying in bed on his phone.
He doesn't do chores.
He asks to go to hang out with his friends
and all of his friends are a lot older than he is.
I mean he's 17 and he's hanging around
with 20 to 25 year old men
that the majority of them have had criminal records.
They've been in jail.
And you say that he'll yell at you
and go off in the rages
and then when he's finished he'll just stare at you
in what you say is a creepy fashion.
Absolutely.
He'll get right up in front of my face
and he'll scream at me.
And he's flailing his arms
and he's going like this.
And he has never raised a hand to hit me
but his face will get red and he'll just go like this.
I'm gonna hurt something, I'm gonna hit something,
I'm gonna hurt something,
and he'll go off into his room
and he'll slam the door.
And then he comes back out
and he'll just stand right in front of us,
exactly in front of us,
and he'll just look at us and stare.
And I'll say, "Mike, why are you staring at me?
What's going on Mike?"
And then he might say, "Are you gonna let me go?
Are you gonna let me do this?"