I've been on this site reading post for over a year now but this is my first time posting.  I've been with my wife for almost 16 years now.  Her son was about 1-1/2 years old when we first started dating.  His father died when he was three years old and i've been the only father he really knows.  I guess it would make more sense to start at the beginning but considering the day I've had I'm just going to start current and maybe back track on future posts.  Among the myriad of problems my wifes 17 year old has drugs is one of the larger ones.  We've been consistantly testing him every month.  One of those test that registers about 16 different types of drugs.  He tests positive every time and more recently he has come up positive for pills.  We used to ground him for a month with each positive test.  My wife thought that was too long so it was scaled back to two weeks.  He has spent the year on restriction for two weeks and off two weeks.  The problem is that my wife lets him off early.  When he back talks she says nothing to him and is just enabling the behavior to continue.  When he does get grounded he just sneaks out and leaves.  When he gets off of school he goes to a friends house and gets high instead of coming home. He comes and goes as he pleases.  He was officially grounded on Monday.Since restriction really begins when he starts following the rules of it it's been a week of him doing what he wants so it hasn't really started.  Today he was talking about hanging out with friends next weekend.  I said you still have two weeks to go before your off so he went to his room to pout about it.  My wife blames me for him for being unhappy.  Since when was restriction ever supposed to be fun.  What kind of parents would we be knowing he is spending his money on drugs and not trying to do anything about it?  Today she informed me that he will no longer be grounded for anything he does.  Her reasoning is that it isn't working so why punish him?  WTF.  So now he can do what he wants, drugs, failing school,  spending all of his paycheck (1300 a month) on god knows what with nothing to show for it but a positive drug test each month, not cleaning his room or doing laundry for a month at a time, leaving food wrappers in his room and molding drink cups and there are no consequences aside from Mom saying you shouldn't do that.  This has been going on for years now and I just can't pretend it doesn't bother me anymore.  I really resent him and her parenting and hope that graduating this year and moving out is the only thing i have to look foward to.  We just got a email from the school saying he's failing two classes and won't graduate unless he can turn it around.  Arrrgggg.  I don't know if my marriage will survice if i have to wait longer living with him.  Feels good to vent.  I'll give more background in the next post.  Thanks for listening.