Dear Abby: With his sobriety, my son became critical and condescending to his brothers and sisters and me

Dear Abby: My youngest son, 27, has been clean and sober for two years, after surviving the horrible dependence on fentanyl. I helped send it healthy. It was not easy, but it is alive today. However, with this sobriety, a new person emerges who criticizes and condescends towards his brothers and sisters and for me. He finds faults in each of us who “disgust him” and, therefore, he chose to no longer engage with us.

He claims that he says “his truth” and that “good or evil” no longer exists for him. He has no problem to harm our feelings because it is “our problem” and he “will no longer meet the standards of society”. I come to him from a place of love and acceptance, and I tell him all the time. He tells me that I am delusional and that I live a lie.

I don’t know what to do or say. He is ready to move away from our family if we cannot come to a place of “mutual understanding”, which is in his own way. I am about to get away from him because I am tired of his tirades and his lower everyone. What should I do? – Mom disappointed in Minnesota

Dear Mom: Is it possible that to win his sobriety, your son joined a kind of cult program? His treatment of you and his brothers and sisters is neither normal nor acceptable. If you prefer to save the sorrow and put an end to its verbal abuses, you have the right to distant yourself until it is straightening up.

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Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact dear Abby to www.dearabby.com or Po Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.