Mary Cosby is letting viewers watch her navigate a challenge she never thought she’d face.
On the Nov. 27 episode of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, Mary sat down with her son Robert Jr. to confront his drug addiction. In a rare moment for the Housewives franchise, cameras rolled as Mary’s 21-year-old son confessed to abusing a variety of substances after she noticed concerning changes in his behavior.
“Robert was like, the perfect child,” she said in her confessional. “He was very good in school. He got straight A’s all the way up until he graduated. When he set his mind to do something, he did it. He was like our prize, very smart, very advanced. That’s the Robert I know, and that’s the Robert I’m trying to reach.”
As she entered Robert Jr.’s room, Mary told him he had to be honest with her about what was going on, saying, “You’ve gotta be real. You’ve gotta talk to me.”
It was then that he revealed he had taken a Xanax after being awake all night.
“So were you just gonna sleep through the day? Just sleep your whole day away?” Mary questioned.
“No, I just took half to just chill me out, and then I took an Adderall to balance out the Xanax,” he admitted.
Mary grew teary-eyed, asking if Robert Jr. thought he had a problem. “Are you unhappy?” she asked.
“Sometimes, I feel like, I don’t know, just life is like this chicken without seasoning,” he explained. “But when I get high, it’s like seasoning.”
He went on to reveal that he first took Xanax — a prescription medication for anxiety — when he was 16 and a friend gave it to him at a party.
“Then I was like, ‘I like this,’” he continued. “I started buying it. Then I started doing Xanax with acid, and then Molly with Xanax, because I really like Xanax, so I mixed it with everything, Xanax and cocaine.”
“You know, the regular 30-milligram Oxys?” he asked his mom, referring to the opioid painkiller Oxycontin. “I noticed, like, this is a turning point for me. I was taking 10 at once, and I couldn’t even feel it. I couldn’t feel it at all.”
As she began to cry, Mary assured Robert Jr. that she wouldn’t “judge” him for opening up to her.
“I can help you,” she pleaded. “I can try to help you, but you have to help yourself, because I’m not gonna support it. I’m not. You know I’m not. Do you accept it’s a problem, that you’re having a problem?”
As he remained silent, Mary’s cry turned to sobs.
“I just feel very disappointed with myself,” Mary told cameras. “I feel like I let him down somewhere. I’m very aware, and I do know that Robert did smoke weed. I do know he would eat edibles, but yet I just trusted him in my mind, thinking that’s where he would stop. And I was clearly wrong. I mean, clearly wrong. I missed the mark.”
She went on to tell her son, “You’re blessed. You wake up every morning, every day is a new day, a blessed day to waste, to get high.”
“You will die,” she added.
Robert Jr. then made a heart-breaking admission: “I wanted to die at the time.”
“You know how that would kill me?” Mary responded.
“I felt like a stain — I just felt like this world wasn’t for me,” he shared in the emotion-packed scene. “You’re the only reason I didn’t kill myself.”
“You have to know I love you more than anything,” Mary wept. “More than anything in this world. I think I love you more than dad, like, don’t ever tell dad I said that, but you’re my friend, you’re my son, you’re my gift. God gave you to me. You’re the only thing that ever made me happy. Before I had you, I was never happy. You came and you were so real. It was everything I hoped for in a person.”
Wiping away his own tears, Robert Jr. said, “I just barely started being happy again.”
“Please recognize it, own it and change it. Because you can,” Mary said as she reached her hand out to her son and pulled him in for a hug.
“I love you,” he whispered to her.
In September, Mary offered an update on Robert Jr., saying he was doing better.
“He’s doing lovely, beautiful,” she shared. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Mary shares Robert Jr. with her husband, Robert Cosby Sr. The couple celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on Sept. 28.
During a season 1 confessional, Mary revealed that Robert Sr. was her grandmother’s second husband and that her grandmother had an “arranged” Mary’s marriage. “Before she passed, she made it very clear that she wanted me to be the one to take her place in the church and inherit everything,” said Mary, who is Pentecostal. “That came with homes, money, our church and also marrying her husband.”
“Don’t think it wasn’t weird, because it was!” she added.
Mary told PEOPLE in September that she would “never forget” her wedding day.
“I felt like I did the Lord’s will,” she share. “I felt like I was in his divine will. And there’s no feeling like that. Money can’t even buy that. And that’s the memory I have doing that when we got married.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 or go to 988lifeline.org.
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The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
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