Drug use with ASD

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I am in need of info from other parents about drug use with their ASD teens. my son is 17 and was dx at age 11. My fear has always been he would be holding the bag of pot to make a friend. Well, for the last 3 months he has been using some pot. He has been caught twice due to my just asking him and he admitted to it and has been doing random drug screens. he was caught by me in Dec and grounding and promised to never do again and then yesterday found out he has done it again. He has told me he made a bad choice due to trying to make a friend which he has none now according to him as I busted the 2 friends he had with letting their parents know. of course, this group of kids easily prey on our kids. Part of it makes me think it is due to his poor choices with social skills and also has a borderline low IQ. Please offer me some suggestions as I am grieving terribily and felt I have tried to help my sone and empower him in every aspect of life since diagnosis. I know feel i have been a complete failure and no where to turn. He is in therapy.I now fear he will be a victim pf bullying due to his reporting his friends. please help em with some direction to turn.

Nurse911, I can totally relate to your situation. I've seen my DS14 trying things he never would have thought of before just to impress his peers, but all of us know that this is typical adolescence, not just ASD. I, unfortunately, am still experiencing these behavior so I don't really have any incite as to what works to bring them out of this. I was hoping that would come with age and maturity. What does his therapist say? Does he respect the therapist? Who else is there in his life that can sit with him and talk about things that may be able to turn things around?

Im sure there are kids who do this because they are pressured but with some once they do it they find that it makes them feel "better", more social, easier to deal with anxiety, ect. I have a 24 year old who is a severe drug addict and he started with weed. He started, in his own words, because it made him feel "normal"...so it can also be a self medicating type of thing

that's exactly what i was thinking, he may be self-medicating. because marijuana can ease stress and make it easier for people to socialize and feel better about themselves. my oldest child's father was undiagnosed AS and he used marijuana to medicate himself and it made him much easier to be around, not that i would promote it's use(he only lived to be 32) but at least your son is not drinking or using hard drugs which are both far more harmful not to mention addictive. he will probably not be likely to open up to you any time soon because you chose to involve his 'friends' as well. i think at 17 smoking pot is fairly normal and although it can be scary for the parents, especially if they've never tried it, it is probably not nearly as harmful as you might think. chances are he will outgrow it but in my experience to harp on it will only push him farther away and alienate him from the family. follow through on the punishment you have given him and do your best to stay on top of what he is doing without accusing him or being overly suspicious of everything he does. make sure he knows you love him unconditionally and make an effort to include him in family things that will be fun for him. it is sad but the fact is at 17 he is practically an adult(well, where i live 18 is considered adult although i understand it may be different in other places) in the end the choice is really his. also be sure that he knows that if at any point he feels he needs help with this, be it now or ten years from now, that you will be there for him. also, don't give him any money if you feel he will use this to buy drugs. if this becomes an ongoing problem you may want to look into nar-anon which is a group to help family members of people who are using drugs come to terms with it and teach them how to react to him in a way that won't cause more harm then good. my thoughts are with you.