Daughter admitted to doing heroin

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

You are the one practicing the healthy approach right now. Your husband needs to get in touch, as much as your daughter does, with the FACT that this IS black and white, as in life and death. I’m a recovering addict who lives with an addict.

NarAnon will be huge in helping you and your husband understand the disease and to cope and to be ok no matter what she does. Heroin has a nasty withdrawal, very sick and uncomfortable. If she’s not motivated to get clean to begin with, I have serious doubts that she’ll stay clean once she starts to get dope sick. There are detox programs and treatment centers funded by medicare and/or local funding and/or private donations. Look for one of those places so she has a fair shot at detoxing and then maybe she will grab on to recovery. The deal should be, for her, “you go to this detox/rehab TODAY or you leave here and don’t call until you are ready for help” PERIOD. She either has to see that as her bottom or she has to ride this to the bitter ends. You and her dad need to be healthy in spite of her illness!!!

If I can be of any support at all, please pm me (I don’t know how PMs work here)! I have a lot of experience in this area.

Hugs!!

42

Be sure not to beat yourself up for feeling angry and frustrated about all this. It’s normal and natural to feel that way. It doesn’t make you a bad wife or a bad mother. It is not making her resist treatment- she might do that even if you were a perfect saint who never felt angry or frustrated by anything she did.

43

This is so true, and give your husband a break too. You’re more insightful than a lot of parents (and spouses and siblings, etc) in terms of what is really going on. Addicts are, by nature, manipulative and dishonest because they live in denial of reality and refuse to accept responsibility and the denial is SO thick that they honestly don’t know they’re lying to themselves, never mind the rest of us. The fact that you are even able to recognize the manipulation (because we’re masterful at it!) is a plus for YOUR recovery and hers and that you are willing to let go and let her find her bottom is admirable. It’s difficult, very difficult, to love someone enough to NOT love them to death. Your husband, by virtue of being a man (forgive this bit of sexism gentlemen) and being her father, has blinders on where she is concerned. He’s in some denial himself. He wants to believe that this time will be different and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he does allow himself to believe that and you interjecting the reality into conversations with him about it will undoubtedly get his defenses up. He doesn’t want to see the truth. You might want to see if there is a professional interventionist available to your family who can help you confront her in a meaningful way and to present a united front. If she can divide you and Dad, she wins, or more accurately, she loses and her disease wins.

You’re gonna look like the “bad guy” here and you’ve got to be OK with that. Addiction is such an insidious and complex disorder that it truly infects and affects the whole family. I hope your husband will go with you to a Nar Anon or Al Anon (if there is no Nar Anon in your area) meeting with you as he really needs to hear the experience of other parents who have been where he is and where he’s going.

I’m very sincere about my offer of help… I know you don’t know me but that doesn’t matter. I help addicts and their families every day and I don’t know them either, until I do.

44

I’m sorry to hear the offer of help hasn’t met with enthusiasm, but I’m not surprised. And as you said, she’ll do better for awhile then backslide…that also rings true.

As for your husband, purple, I advise you look at it like he will eventually come to the same conclusion as you, but he needs more time to process it or accept it or whatever. Don’t feel dissed or ignored or like your opinion doesn’t matter etc. Rushing him or trying to persuade him won’t work and will likely strain your relationship. Agree to disagree where possible and avoid pointless arguments that will lead nowhere. Like this exchange from “Apollo 13…”

*Jack Swigert: Hey, don’t tell me how to fly the damned CM, all right? They brought me in here to do a job, they asked me to stir the damned tanks, and I stirred the tanks!
Fred Haise, Sr.: You didn’t know what you were doing, do you?
Jim Lovell: Jack, quit kicking yourself in the ass.
Jack Swigert: This is NOT MY FAULT!
Jim Lovell: No one is saying it is. If I’m in the left-hand seat when the call comes up, I stir the tanks.
Jack Swigert: Yeah, well, tell him that.
Fred Haise, Sr.: I just asked you what the gauge was reading. AND YOU DON’T KNOW!
Jim Lovell: All right, we’re not doing this, gentlemen. We are not going to do this. We’re not going to go bouncing off the walls for ten minutes, 'cause we’re just going to end up back here with the same problems! *

(underlining mine)

I also think you should approach this as “take whatever help you can get.” If you go to meetings etc. alone, that helps the team. If your husband agrees to go along, that helps even more…but if he won’t go, you should go anyway.

Be kind to yourself. I know you’ve retraced your steps and probably thought there were things you could have handled better or differently or whatever when she was six or ten or sixteen. But kids don’t come with instruction manuals and they’re all different. And I’ve often thought that a parent can do a pretty great job of raising a kid, but if that kid meets up with a bad influence or two, who knows? There are no guarantees…parents all deal the best they can.

Best wishes…I’ll be thinking of you.

45

Also good advice and this isn’t your fault and you couldn’t have stopped it. Addiction is a DISEASE, I’m completely convinced of that and I think we have the disease or we don’t and the drug abuse (or gambling or booze or shopping, et al) are the symptoms of the disease. You could no more prevent this than bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia. It can be familial but in my case, no family history of addiction other than a distant cousin who died of alcoholism. It doesn’t matter anyway. It is what it is and we all have to deal with NOW. What happened yesterday, last year or 15 years ago is done. We accept it, learn the lessons afforded us and move on.

This is my email address because I can’t figure out PM’s here or if we have them or if I have them… jana516@att.net… I’d love to help.

46

My name is spooje, and I’m an addict.

Shirley Ujest is right. Addicts fall into 2 categories. Those that want to be clean, and those that don’t.

We have a saying. Recovery is not for those who need it, or those who deserve it, but only for those who want it.

If she doesn’t want help, she isn’t going to accept help.

My opinion is that you should not shield her from the consequesnces of her actions. Let her know that help is available when is ready. Then show her the door.

47

Heh- in my little tribe, we say that it’s not even for the people who want it- Lots of people want it. Recovery is for the people who do it.

48

This is what we say too… It only works if you do it but I will say that with only a quarter or so of the effort I put into getting loaded put into recovery, the benefits have been miraculous!

I heard an addict say once, he speaks all over the place… Some of you may have met him… I hear a lot of people say, “I earned this seat” and he says, “I didn’t earn this seat, I have this seat by GRACE. If I’d gotten what I earned, I’d not have shit. This seat is a GIFT!” I love that and believe it!

49

You are on the right path. Your husband is holding desperately to a hope that simply does not exist. As you can see by the responses here that are pretty much unanimous in the “get help or go” plan, you are not doing her any favors by continuing to support her or by giving her a place to stay. Why would she bother to change anything if she continues getting a nice place to live, food, tv, phone, etc. etc. etc. and still gets to do drugs? You need to kick her out of her comfort zone. You need to make it real.

Yes, it will be the hardest thing you ever do, but love her enough to let her hate you for awhile.

Let us know how it goes. We care.

50

Right up there with, “If I had gotten what I deserved, I’d be fucked!”

:slight_smile:

51

And that’s a very natural thing for a person to do. Don’t blame him too much for it.

That doesn’t, however, mean it is the right thing to do.

Tell your husband this.

If you’d done something better back when, things might have even turned out worse now. All kinds of well-meant actions can have unintended consequences. Parenting (and life) isn’t a simple system where, if you do things right, your kids are guaranteed to turn out well.

52

She has agreed to get help. Right now I’m working on lining up insurance for her, and there is a local place that she wants to try. My goals right now are to work on insurance immediately and check into the rehab place to find out how things work. I’m really working blind here, having no experience with this stuff.

I will have to check out Medicaid and from what I understand it takes time to be approved. If anyone has any info on what to do or not do, please let me know. She is not eligible to be covered under my husband’s medical insurance right now and I’m sure treatment will be fairly expensive.

Right now things are peaceful and there is no conflict in the house. We are all being fairly pleasant to one another and she isn’t being angry or rude. That’s a relief.

53

I am glad for you and your family that she is willing to take the first steps towards healing…

Best wishes, Matthew

54

Have you spoken to the rehab place? They are probably intimately aquainted with the process, and may even have staff available to guide you through the paperwork.

55

PH, many treatment centers are already funded by medicaid and other federal/local programs. She doesn’t have to have medicaid to get in. They can also apply for her once she’s in treatment. Just call some treatment centers today… Do a google search for drug treatment in your area, no insurance and see what comes up. Call one of them and they can probably tell you who takes patients without ins. Most heroin and cocaine addicts do not have ins… or money, and they know that.

Godspeed!

56

Thank you! I’ll do that right now - that didn’t even occur to me, but makes good sense. If I said that dopers rock, that would be a little odd given the circumstances, wouldn’t it?

57

You might also think of getting in touch with United Way. As much as their fundraising techniques can be very irritating, they do good work, and have loads of resources for people in your situation.

Call 211 or go to www.in211.org.

It’s free and may give you some great ideas for other resources you can use.

58

Salvation Army (much as I dislike their religiosity) has treatment programs in some cities too.

We dopers rock… Addicts smoke rocks… Addiction SUCKS!!!

I hope she can grab on to recovery!

59

I know you will have questions as you move forward- please feel free to ask, any time!

Good luck!

60

Oh, absolutely. See for instance “The Butterfly Effect” or “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “Back to the Future” for cinematic takes on this. But of course the OP doesn’t have a time machine anyway. Done is done; deal with it from here.

As for the husband, there’s the old belief that parents are always supposed to do whatever they can to help the child, which is as it should be. That’s great but of course you have to be careful that what you do helps instead of hurts. Sometimes it’s obvious—it’s better not to give the child $1000 in cash that will only go into the veins. If you really want to help, better to buy groceries or give the money to the landlord etc. Good intentions can backfire big time.

But addicts can be crazy clever, lie with a straight face, all that. They’re going to play the sympathy angle for all it’s worth. The person you knew is buried under a lot of other stuff at the moment and being controlled by it.

Yeah, this rings true. Many addicts probably have families who have, at some point, disowned them. They can’t hold a job, may even be living on the street, so how would they have insurance?

I should have thought of some of these. :smack: I have to think they’re all cognizant of what the rest of the other organizations do and if one couldn’t help you, that organization could refer you to another that handles cases like your daughter’s, OP.

It sounds like progress…but I wouldn’t let your guard down. The spectre that you get from your worst imaginings, i.e. she’s shooting heroin every night, is possible. But you don’t and can’t know the whole truth. You have to hope for the best but plan for the worst. You’re quite possibly out of your depth on this and need to prevail on professionals in the know. Good luck!