My 15yo is straight up addicted to cannabis.

I don't know what I want, beyond to share all of this. I seriously doubt anyone has useful advice but I'd definitely take it. I do have a therapist who has been an enormous help as I navigate my kid (15M)'s addiction.

My kid went through a depressive episode in middle school during which he dropped out of basically all of his extracurricular activities. After he'd pulled through the worst of the depression, he refused to go back.

He started exploring nicotine and trying to explore cannabis in middle school. I kept catching him and we had a number of conversations about why he's not allowed to smoke weed.

When he got to high school, he connected almost immediately with a crew of really rough kids, drinking at school and beating other kids up. He wasn't going to class at all, and was coming home drunk or stoned. It was bonkers. We got him into counseling at school, talked to him a ton about his birth family history of addiction. Spent a ton of time with him, leaving town most weekends to do stuff together and get him sobered up. Somewhere in there he started to recognize that these kids were really not serving him and he found other friends who drink and smoke but they do it while playing guitar on the lawn and watching the sunset instead of while beating up other kids and wilding out.

We made him come straight home after school, and moved his allowance to a managed debit card so he doesn't have access to cash. He got into debt to a dealer and was dealing on his own to resolve the debt. That was remarkably easy to get into -- it seems like kids get into debt and then the dealer says "you need to get me the money or else" and if they can't get the money then you have to work for them to earn back your debt but the terms of that work are predictably vague.

He got drunk to the point of throwing up. I really had to remind myself that no I should not give him water or B vitamins or offer him anything to alleviate the hangover because he needs the whole hangover. He has backed off from alcohol, though I assume he still drinks sometimes.

He was using A LOT but swears it is only cannabis. But, like, ate a 150mg edible and was having seizures on the bathroom floor at school.

We started searching his bag every day. Checking all of his pockets. We threw a ton of cannabis away. I took away his knives -- he is very interested in knives and swords, generally. We had let him have some carving knives, which are tools. but said no to swords and things that fall more cleanly into the weapon category. But we took them all away when we learned he had started selling.

He was pretty stressed out about the dealer he was in debt to, and I really stuck to my guns and said "Listen, I will be more than happy to go with you to the school administration to get some support and let them know what is going on. You deserve to be safe at school. I will meet you at school to walk you home. But I'm not giving you cash."

I tried to get the school involved and got nowhere. They were beyond useless. Wouldn't track him down if he wasn't in class. I gave them names and showed them screenshots of kids offering him weed and they couldn't do anything with it. I reached out to the police (something I never thought I'd do) when I had pretty explicit screenshots of his dealer offering him products -- I think I had confiscated his phone and saw the messages while he was at school without it.

We finally compromised and I said he could have money he earned doing odd jobs in cash. He was supposed to be taking care of a neighbor's pets. I held the keys and he kept coming home stoned, so I said that if he couldn't come home sober, I'd be caring for the pets and he wasn't going to get paid. He did not believe me. He did convince me to let him have the wages for the days he did show up. I regret that: I think that I should have said that money has to go into his savings account, where it is still his but he can't access it for extra-legal purchases.

The cash deal was this: he could have ~$30 up front and then $5 in cash each week if and only if he committed to meeting with an addiction counselor (including showing up sober for those meetings), attending every class, every day, on time, and not dealing anymore. That started when the pet sitting started. And he did it, with some hiccups. But he did it.

Somewhere in there he also started tapering off of his anti-depressant (at his request) and really quickly he started to express concern about his future. I genuinely think that the SSRI was working a little too well and he was just not at all concerned about failing his classes.

He's adopted, after spending years in foster care, and definitely experienced pretty intense trauma before he was part of our family. He's spent a lot of time in therapy and refuses to go back. I can see where he's coming from but it is also clear as day to me that he has benefited from it even when therapy didn't "fix everything."

So this is where we are now: he's going to his classes -- still sticking with every class, on time, every day. I told him that he can take on a new pet sitting gig and put the money on his debit card (so he can use it for clothes, movies, food, whatever is legal) and if he is consistent about showing up sober for that then the next gig can be for cash. Or he can pick two days in a single week, tell me in the morning that he is going to come home sober and actually follow through. And once he's done that he can take pet sitting gigs or yard work gigs for neighbors and re-up the bank of money available to him as cash.

He comes home stoned basically every day. I have talked to his teachers who all report that he's lucid, present and engaged at school so I believe him when he says he's waiting for after school. He is struggling in math and keeps insisting he "can't" do it. I consistently remind him that a) smoking weed every day does not leave him with the clarity that he needs to apply his full brain to complex problem solving; b) doing homework is key to succeeding in a math class because that is when you solidify what you learned in the classroom; c) we're happy to get tutoring if he can commit to engaging with the tutor.

I feel like I'm doing everything I can to be loving and supportive without enabling him. I still have misgivings about the cash deal but it was what incentivized him to start going to class and seeing the addiction counselor so I don't think we'd be where we are if I hadn't struck that deal with him.

At this point he's wholly addicted to cannabis. I have absolutely no idea what I should be doing differently in this situation. It is exhausting.