To me, the biggest red flag is the nonsensical story about taking powdered methadone, heating it up in a spoon, and then using insulin needles to squirt it under one’s tongue. It’s absurd on its face. Why would you heat up a powder just to drink it? If you were squirting something under your tongue, why in hell would you use a syringe with a needle attached?!? Ouch!
The real story is that the young man heard someone was in his house and saw some disturbing stuff. His immediate thought is, “Oh shit, they saw my cooking spoons and used needles. What story can I concoct that will account for both used needles and used spoons?” The fact that your spy didn’t even see the spoons yet he felt the need to include them in his story means that they’re there somewhere.
What concerns me is his family’s motive in lying to your friend. Why do they want their clearly addicted son to have a newborn in his house? That’s not good for anyone! That makes no sense at all. Unless they are planning on taking the baby away once the two junkies hit a low spot. That would be my number one concern.
As for the empty pill capsules, I’d like to ask the experts here, isn’t it possible that he’s using whatever was in the pills to cut his heroin with? That would explain why there are empty capsules all over. He poured out whatever relatively benign powder into the spoon with the heroin and threw the empty capsule to the floor. Or have I been watching too many movies? I don’t know, I’m just speculating.
It’s also possible the entire family uses and to them it’s “normal” to do so, to the point they help out and enable each other. You will, of course, have squabbles over drug supplies but an outsider wouldn’t necessarily see all that.
Back when I worked at the clinic we had a woman whose drug use started when she accidentally walked in on her father and his buddies shooting up and with “junkie logic” they thought it would be hilarious to get the 8 year old girl high. Poor girl never had a chance to grow up clean. Daddy kept her supplied for years until she moved out. You can have all sorts of depraved shit going on in severely dysfunctional families, which is a reason why sometimes it’s best for a kid to be removed from such a household.
And, not that I really want to dredge this stuff up, but since there seems to be genuine concern here and we’re talking bad scenarios, it’s not unknown for young children in a household full of drug addicts to be utilized in some form of sex trade or other, from nude pictures to outright pimping out of the kids.
Not all addicts do this, the majority do not, but as the numbers of addict adults in a household or extended family go up the odds of something that loathsome and criminal happening go up. If this is a situation were dad or granddad is running a daily supply of drugs to the young man I’d be extremely concerned about what else is going on with this family.
Possible, I suppose. Although heroin supplies are usually already pretty cut to begin with, more likely he’d be cutting some of it down and selling it to support his habit and keeping the “good” (more potent) stuff for himself. Or he’s mixing his heroin with some other drug for more “fun”. There’s no way to know what’s in those capsules.
Didn’t you say upthread that several people in the family were medical professionals? That’s the “doctor” they’re talking about. It might be some wacked out attempt to treat his addiction off the books, but more likely, it’s a family drug affair.
Methadone already comes in a liquid form. If he wants it as a liquid, he just has to ask for it. He could even have Grandpa drive him to the clinic as part of their daily routine. It’s way less trouble than the cooking it a spoon part. (And yes, why doesn’t he just lick the spoon?)
That whole family is full of shit and a danger to your friend’s children.
Is Boyfriend the baby’s father? You’ve never really said.
Unless the pregnant girl is under some sort of court supervision, it’s a total lie that she has to get drug tested at every visit to the doctor. That’s ridiculous.
Yes, if she’s gone through the justice system she might have mandatory drug testing ordered by the judge. If not, it’s a ridiculous lie.
And the part about bring home liquid methadone and squirting it under the tongue with a syringe? Seriously? I guess that’s the sort of fantastic lie you tell to someone so confused that they can’t tell truth from falsehood anymore. If you’re not familiar with addicts then I suppose anything might be plausible, but seriously.
Junkies have syringes lying around when they use them to inject drugs. Lots of opiate addicts take pills or liquids, if they do that they don’t need syringes. The boyfriend is injecting drugs, period, end of story.
Your friend is scared that her daughter is an opiate addict, living with an opiate addict, with a family of opiate addicts, and is pregnant and the baby is getting dosed as well. If she believes the obvious lies then she doesn’t have to confront the reality of the situation.
Maybe there’s nothing the mother can do for her pregnant 17 year old junkie daughter. But she should stop pretending that her daughter isn’t taking opiates, and living in a drug house with needles everywhere.
I’ll just chime in to say that there are plenty of trustworthy and honest people who are on methadone and honestly trying to better their lives. This does not sound like one of those people.
At first I thought this was a story that had gotten confused and that he was actually on Suboxone, which is a film taken sublingually (it dissolves like a breath strip, no injection is required), instead of methadone. However, more details have clarified that it’s not the case.
This will vary widely by state and by clinic, but enough time with clean urine screens and “good behavior” will earn you take-home doses from a methadone clinic. You start out going every day – and some people will never get past that stage – but after a year or two of not screwing up, you might be able to go once a month, take your daily dose for that day on-site, and take home a month’s worth of medication with you. You certainly have to slowly work up to that by taking home a few days, then a week, etc., and any screwups will knock you a rung or two or all the way back down the ladder…but it’s certainly possible to pick up a month’s worth and keep it at home as a part of addiction treatment.
So he doesn’t do heroin, but he takes his treatment in the exact same method a junkie would take heroin?
Sure, and he doesn’t do cocaine either, he just likes the way it smells. :rolleyes:
Your friend is NOT doing the right thing and neither are you.
She doesn’t “get” that she is dealing with majorly fucked up people because she is also majorly fucked up be allowing her 17-year-old pregnant CHILD to live in this person’s home and put herself and her unborn baby at risk. What do you think any responsible adult stranger would do if they walked in on the scene you described? They would call the police or child protective services. Your friend is taking worse care of her kid than most random strangers observing the situation would.
The friend is not caring properly for her own child and is being a horrible parent by refusing to take action. You are not being a good friend to her by allowing this to continue. Make an anonymous report if you must, but take action before the preventable death of a child makes you realize how idiotic concerns about hurt feelings and wishful thinking are.
Well it’s easy to sit back on a message board and say what somebody should or shouldn’t be doing when you’re not the one involved with it.
Things are being done but I’m not going to post everything here, I have no idea who may read this and who knows whom. I’ve already said more than I should have when originally all I wanted was the facts on methadone. She’s my friend, I am upset but I can’t even imagine what she is going through. It’s not easy to find out your child is doing something they shouldn’t, or with someone who isn’t whom they seem, or to find out people you thought you could trust have been lying to you.
It’s the same thing my other friend went through when her son-in-law tried to kill her daughter. You think it can’t happen to you, or that it can’t happen in your family, this stuff happens to other people. Your whole world gets turned upside down.
It’s real easy to sit back and act superior and judgmental… until it happens to you.
You’re trying to paint your friend as a helpless victim. But what’s patently obvious is that your friend is a horrible horrible horrible parent. (We also have a 17 year old daughter, and I couldn’t imagine letting her stay with someone like that. Would be inconceivable.) It’s also apparent your friend is unable to take responsibility for her role in this train wreck, and - even worse - you are complicit. Good grief.
This has nothing to do with acting “superior and judgmental.” Yes, it is a difficult situation for you, your friend, and her daughter’s, not to mention the unborn baby. You know what’s even more difficult? Comforting someone whose kid or grandkid has died due to their inaction. Save yourself that pain and pick up the phone. CPS is not going to rush in with guns blazing–they will investigate and hopefully make the right call. This shouldn’t be up to you, but it is.
Yes, it’s weird that mom is letting her 17 year old pregnant daughter live with junkie boyfriend… but we just don’t know the details of what’s going on here. It’s easy to say mom screwed up when the daughter is a trainwreck at 17, but some people just seem determined to screw up.
Frankly, I don’t want to know more details, but without them I’ll try not to get too judgmental. Hell, maybe mom doesn’t even have legal custody of the 17 year old, maybe her dad does and mom is trying to deal with a lack of legal control. Or maybe she is terrible, I just don’t know and neither does anyone else here other than the OP.
Anyone in the scenario could call child protective services or speak to the child’s doctor to suggest a drug test, regardless of custody or legal control.