Daughter admitted to doing heroin

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I really don’t have any other outlet right now, so like many others who have come before me, here I am. I may sound rational and all, but in reality I’m freaking the fuck out. Our daughter’s boyfriend called us tonight and told my husband a few eye-opening things because they had been in a fight. Some we already knew about, but some we did not.

She is very angry, very defiant, very hateful right now. She and I have a spotty relationship right now as it is - I am her mother and love her dearly, but she proclaims loud and proud that dad is always number one. Whatever, she’s been doing that for years and at this point I don’t know that there’s much I can to about it.

So, my husband got off of the phone and went to pick her up. It has not been good since then. I don’t know who that shaky, angry, out of control person is. My husband and I feel much the same way right now.

We need to get her help. She has no insurance, being almost 20 and not a full-time student. She hasn’t been covered by my husband’s policy for months now. Cutting, drugs, anxiety, stress. She needs help. How do you help someone who can’t stand the sight of you?

What do I do?

After talking to her for hours tonight to stay away from boyfriend and her saying that of course she would, he has been violent lately (holy shit), the first thing she does as soon as she gets the chance is to pick up the phone and call him repeatedly. After I confronted her and took the phone away, she spread some bullshit around and said she was leaving. We stopped her. I’m not even sure why at this point, because you can’t force someone over 18 to stay if they would rather not. We know where she will end up if we let her walk out that door.

What do I do?
we are devestated and never ever would have expected this. So smart, so smart. She was always the best student in her class when she was little. We were once so close. I’m not any different. What happened?

2

Here’s a ton of {{HUGS}} for you. I hope there’s other Dopers here who can help you out.

3

I just don’t know. I’m not a parent. I am so sorry–it must be such heartache and worry. Growing up can be so hard for some kids, and that pain radiates outward and pierces the parents too.

Whatever you do, I hope you and your husband will do it together for her so she doesn’t ‘divide and conquer’ the two of you. You can probably be stronger parents as a team.

She doesn’t really hate you. Honestly.

Good thoughts your way for your family.

4

PH, I can’t really tell you much, but my son went through a really nasty patch in his teenage years. he was a very angry kid, he was doing all sorts of drugs, drinking, you name it, he was doing it. I had to let him go. I knew he was a good kid underneath the bullshit, he knew that I loved him and that I would be there for him when he got his shit together. Jake was never far away, but he was in a bad place for a few years. All I could do was keep the lines of communications open. He knew I was there for him, but he couldn’t do the crazy shit around me.

Luckily, Jake did figure it out, he eventually quit the stupid stuff and became the man I knew and hoped he would be. I was very very proud of him.

Good luck, my thoughts are with you, PM me if you need moral support or a hug.

Farmerchick.

5

I got nuthin other than a bunch of {{{{{hugs}}}}} for you right now. As parents we do the best we can with what we have; and as adults, our kids make their own choices. I wish I had some words of wisdom for you. Take gentle care of yourself.

6

Sorry, I really don’t know how I’d deal with this, at least not anything concrete. But there will be some folks here who have gone through this, from both sides, and should have some ideas on where to start. Hang in there.

7

I was similar to your daughter when I was about 16. I had a bad-boy boyfriend who was the king of losers. Looking back, I was with him due to poor self-esteem. I never did heroin, but I did some other drugs, all gotten through him. When my parents found out what a scum bag he was, I was forbidden to see him, but would lie and sneak out and see him anyway. It is only through a miracle of Og that I did not end up pregnant. This situation made me very defiant and angry at my parents - and looking back, it was for no good reason. They were WONDERFUL loving parents and I had the best childhood. It was just this punk boyfriend that screwed my mind up. I also think I had depression, but it wasn’t diagnosed… I had several instances of self-harming/cutting. Later on, in my 20s, I got treatment for depression. Perhaps if I had been treated earlier, it would have helped.

Like you and your daughter, I was always the good girl growing up, a straight-A student up until age 16, when I got together with this loser. My parents and I were always close, but all of a sudden I became a defiant bitch from hell. I am sure they felt as dumbfounded as you feel.

Anyway by age 17, I had snapped out of it (finally realized what a jerk he was), got out of high school with good grades, went to college, have a career, and am now best friends with my parents (I am 33 now). I still feel a lot of guilt for how badly I treated my parents when I was 16.

It sounds like your daughter may be struggling with depression, and the boyfriend is certainly a terrible influence, and is controlling and abusive, and he relies on her low self-esteem to keep her with him. Even though she doesn’t have health insurance, there may be a community mental health program available through the county or state you live in.

Heroin is very dangerous, as I am sure you know. Recently here in Northern Virginia (Fairfax County) a bunch of 20 and 21-year-olds died from heroin overdoses over the past year. Apparently there was this big circle of friends and acquaintances in an upper-class suburban area who got hooked on heroin and getting it from the same circle of dealers. The young people who died were all smart kids who had never gotten into trouble before.

Another very important thing is to make sure she doesn’t become pregnant. Take her to Planned Parenthood for Depo-Provera shots or free/low-cost birth control pills. A pregnancy would only make matters many many many times worse, as I am sure you know.

8

I’m not sure how confident you are of your facts. The bf is telling you things…has she admitted to all of them? You have to assume the worst of course, but maybe that’s a ray of hope.

I’m not a parent, but FWIW: I’d find some professionals. Addiction specialists, AA, Narc-Anon, whatever you have locally. I’d talk to them, explain the situation, and get some guidance. They deal with this all the time and would know the danger signs or what you might do/say to encourage her to seek treatment or maybe set up an intervention or…

Your husband has her ear. Were I he, I would say, “You’re on this self-destructive path. We love you and beg you to stop. We’ll help you find someone who can help you, if you’ll let us. Do you WANT the pain to stop?”

If you think this bad behavior is aimed at you, I would continue:

“You’re an adult and we can’t order you to do anything. We want to remind you that whatever you do to yourself, you’re not getting even with us. If you shoot heroin and overdose, you will be dead—not us. If you share needles and contract HIV, you’ll have AIDS—not us.” Along those lines.

A psych prof of mine was fond of saying that the Chinese symbol for “crisis” is really a combination of two other symbols: danger + opportunity. Opportunity? When will you ever be more motivated to change?

Makes sense, doesn’t it? When they have an intervention, they overwhelm the person with possibly losing everyone he/she loves…the opposite of coddling. If the person wasn’t miserable enough, now there’s nobody to enable it, either. If that person can really walk away from everybody because the drugs (or other addictions) are more important, then that person was a goner anyway.

It’s critical to note that she came back to you. It’s a good sign that not all is hunky dory with the boyfriend, and that could provide leverage.

Best of luck…I feel for you.

9

This is a very good point. I would question the boyfriend’s honesty and motivations.

Also, even if your daughter is not covered under your health care plan, you may be able to get some counseling for yourself. Many plans have provisions for a certain number of visits to a counselor for virtually any reason, and some professional guidance could be of great value.

10

She freely admitted to the heroin, the pills, alcohol, weed, cocaine, and some things that I didn’t even know what they were. I’m going to get on the phone tomorrow and start making some calls. It didn’t occur to me to get counseling for myself, but that’s a great idea. Maybe my husband will come as well, so we can decide together how best to handle this.

She doesn’t seem on the surface to want help, but why would she freely tell all if it wasn’t a way to ask for it? Right now we are dealing with an extremely angry, defiant, “I don’t have a problem and am not addicted so what’s the big deal” young adult. She told us so many things that I want to scrub my brain out.

Anxiety and panic attacks run very strongly in my family and she has both, plus I would imagine that she’s depressed. No job or prospect of one. Barely scraped through high school. Flunked out of community college. Has had chance after chance to pull herself up - owes money to us and both sets of grandparents. We kept thinking that the next time would be the one where she would finally get it together.

She lost her last job because she was sick a couple times in a row; they let her go for attendence. She told us very defiantly that she had shot up for the first time the night before, and that’s why she was sick and throwing up. I feel like an idiot now for being so sympathetic at the time. “Poor kid. Had the flu and those mean people fired her.”

11

I’m not a parent, but the only thing I know for sure about this situation is that you can’t enable her. Don’t do anything to support these behaviors. Seeking out counseling is a great idea, but there’s a chance she’s not going to change, and if she makes the choice not to change, the least you can do is make it hard for her to continue her lifestyle. The truth is, your daughter’s 20, not 15. She is the ultimately responsible one and she needs to get that message loud and clear. My grandmother’s enabling killed my uncle last year. He was 30 years old. He lived at home, didn’t work, paid no rent, made up reasons he needed money so he could go buy drugs. He ODed on heroine, probably deliberately. Don’t let that be your kid.

12

I’m so sorry for having to go through this. Heroin is nothing to mess around with. It is highly addictive.

I might take away her phone so that she is disconnected from negative influences. I might call the police on her boyfriend. I might send her away to live with a relative in another state. There’s a million things you can do but I’m not sure which path is the correct one to take. I do know that love rarely conquers drug addictions.

If she still has a positive relationship with your husband, then he may be the key.

13

Her: I don’t have a problem.
You: It cost you a job already…that’s a problem. You flunked out of junior college…that’s a problem. And you’re here instead of being with your boyfriend…there must be a problem there as well.

Her: I am not addicted.
You: You don’t have to be addicted; when you abuse drugs, you damage yourself. Len Bias tried drugs just once and he’s dead. And for some things, like heroin, abuse quickly turns into addiction.

14

I have been there and done that, as the fucked up young person.

Sounds like she needs help, based on my experience. Her choices don’t seem to be working out very well, so someone else needs to call the shots for a while.

PM me if you want the contact info for a couple of really good residential treatment programs that will remove her from her current environment, at least temporarily. No craziness, funny drugs, weird philosophy or strange religions- just help, both for the acute problem and going forward. I have no stake in these places- I have just seen what works for many young girls out here.

Treatment isn’t cheap, and heroin is the toughest thing to kick. It can be done, but it will take everything she’s got, and most of what you’ve got, as well.

Good luck, and feel free to ask anything you want
Debbie, clean and sober almost 18 years and counting…

15

I’ve watched enough episodes of Intervention that I believe I can speak fairly authoritatively on this issue ;). Pretty much all of your efforts to help her are most likely enabling her or making the problem worse. You pretty much need to let your daughter know that you love her and that as soon as she wants to get help you will do anything for her, but if she doesn’t want help she can’t be part of your life because you aren’t going to aid her in killing herself.

16

purple haze, I don’t have any good advice.

My hearts hurts for you. What an awful thing to be the parent of an adult who is going down the wrong path.

17

You’re in a tough situation no doubt, and I wish you all the best.

But this… I mean, don’t waste your time telling your 20-year-old daughter not to hang out with certain people. You’re wasting your breath and feeding her defiance.

18

So what do we do? If we tell her to leave, she will go straight back to the people who are providing her with this stuff. If we let her stay at home, we are enabling her.

I’ve sent an e-mail to a local group that may be able to help. I wholeheartedly agree that she needs to get out of this town. EJ’s Girl, I’ll PM you right now.

19

My husband and I both said very similar things to her last night. All we got as a response was eye rolling, exasperated looks, and ‘You just don’t get it’. We pointed out to her that family members are starting to notice that something is off. She said ‘Yeah, right.’

We’re floating in the de-nial river right now, and it’s getting deep.

20

The fact that she admitted all of this makes me think maybe she does want some help and will need assistance in breaking her old habits. She’s only 20. Stay with it as much as you can. Let her know that you’ll do what you can to help but that you’re not going to enable her.

You said her father is her favorite. Can he communicate all this to her without getting into a pissing match? What about other older adults? Does she have a good relationship with her grandparents?

Best of luck to you. I know it’s hard, but most kids eventually wake up and change their lives.