Dang, Kricket, what a rough spot you’re in! I have nothing to offer but long-distance virtual hugs and all the good wishes I can muster. It sounds to me like you’re doing the best that can be done under the circumstances, and I’m sure your nieces will appreciate all of your efforts.
How sad not to have family you can rely upon. I guess all you can do is all you can do, with the occasional stop here to let off steam. Be strong - you can get through this.
Gatopescado, if you don’t want to read, don’t read.
Kricket,
Al-Anon is for families/friends of alcoholics yes but those in addiction look at it as all encompassing and many find Al-Anon to be an enormous source of support.
They DO have Nar-Anon which is an offset of Narcotics Anonymous. Nar-Anon meetings are few and far between though.
http://nar-anon.org/naranongroups.htm
If there is not a Nar-Anon meeting close, try Al-Anon, the same principles still apply.
I know what your nieces are going through, I grew up with a mother addicted to crack cocaine. It sucks pig shit. However, I did not have an older sister to help me so your nieces are very blessed to have you.
Your sister has a lot of challenges to face but she must do a lot on her own. You will learn more about addiction than you ever wanted to know.
Good luck and feel free to email me. I have 25 years of experience in dealing with this unfortunately.
Hang in there, Kricket.
Wow Kricket That’s a boat load of shit to deal with.
Please, find Al-Anon or Nar-Anon. You might even try ACoA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) Even though your mother wasn’t an alcoholic you might find a group like that helpful. Growing up with dysfunctional parents has its own set of peculiarities regardless of the dysfunction. Al-Anon and Nar-Anon are based on the same principles and I believe you would be welcomed in either group.
Learn and repeatedly recite the serenity prayer (even if, like me, you don’t believe in any sort of deity)
Grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
It took me a while to figure out that the only thing I can change is me. My attitude, my reactions, my feelings…those are things I can work on.
I can never change another individual no matter how much I want to and no matter how much they really need to change.
Good luck to you and your niece. Stay focused on your mental health and the mental health of that little girl (in that order) and you’ll weather this storm. I hope your sister finds the help she needs.
You are more than welcome to email me if you’d like to Kricket. I can’t guarantee any profound insights, but I’m very willing to be a friendlly ear and answer any questions you might like to ask. Hope today is a little better than yesterday for all of you.
I feel for you, my sister hid the fact that she had been sinking into drug abuse from the rest of the family. Not paying her bills, etc. She dropped her daughter off at the father’s house and never came back to pick her up. Then she disappeared and when we went to her house it was completely trashed. The daughter now lives with the father, but mostly stays with my grandparents because they have nicer schools where they live. My sister was arrested and spent about half a year in jail and her first day out started using again. She got arrested again recently but was bailed out, but we don’t know who bailed her out. I haven’t spoken more than a couple sentences to my sister in about three years. Most families have some degree of dysfunction.
I’m so glad to hear you saved the children. I think your handling this well. You’ve stuck to the path that will save you and the kids, when all the relatives don’t want to believe the truth. I hope you can maintain that strength through all that is still to come. I would be sure to speak with the principal and teacher’s of the kids to be sure they know that their mother has no right to take them, and she will never be allowed to pick them up even for an emergency. You don’t want her telling them your in the hospital and she’s taking them there. Have this discussion with the neighbors if you trust them and show them a picture. Tell them that if they see her with the kids, to call you immediately.
Thank you so much for all of the support. Sometimes it’s just nice knowing there are people who have been there and are willing to listen to you whine a bit.
NAMI has a group in my area and I will give them a call on Monday and I’m checking into Al-anon as well. I think my own teens would do well to go to Alateen because this has really messed with them as well.
We were a pretty close family but we are also the type of people that distance ourselves at times when we need space. I just thought my sister was distancing herself because she just went through a break-up. I really do feel I messed up by not seeing things sooner or when I did start to see things I should have acted sooner because I ended up without their support.
Does it take a few tries in re-hab to make it? She was supposed to go to classes after she left in-patient but never went.
It was suggested I get a copy of the big book?
I really, really just don’t understand what is so appealing about coke, crack, meth, or whatever new is out there. It’s expensive, it makes you look like crap in the end and the biggy it can kill you. Does it make you forget? Does it make you numb?
Evidently it makes you sell/pawn all of your things, your kids things and some shit that doesn’t belong to you but is in the house. I guess I am lucky I got the china and stoneware since she sold everything else that wasn’t nailed down.
The girls are safe and sound and looking healthier and happier. The oldest wasn’t eating at home towards the end from what she told my sister in law. They went out to dinner and my niece was picking at her food and then explained that in the last few months my sister would yell at her not to eat all the food and save some for her younger sister.
She started just eating at school and picking here and there at home so she wouldn’t get in trouble and so her sister could eat. I guess even though I had put a few groceries in the house and she had food stamps, that all of her friends were eating the food and I think she sold the food stamp card. I knew you could sell the stamps when they were actually paper, but I thought it would be harder since they put it on a debit type card.
I feel like such a calous bitch when I say some of the things I say, but I’m still in disbelief about much of it. I know it really happened I just don’t understand it.
I’m taking a bunch of ten year olds camping tonight for my youngest daughters birthday and it will be nice to have a night away from home. Our whole family and then my daughters friends.
Just wanted to let you guys know if I don’t respond to the thread tonight you know I’m not avoiding. (I am the queen of avoidence) And if you don’t hear from me tomorrow then worry because that means the ten years olds have rioted and I’m done for.
The food card requires the user to enter a PIN. It’s like a standard EBT transaction on the machine. The use by the wrong person is illegal, but it’s up to the owner of the card to report a problem or go without the food. Obviously she wanted crack instead, and screwed her children over. They would try to recover the money from her, if they find out she did this, because you sign a paper saying it will only be used for the persons it is meant for. Penalty being you lose the benefit from the point at which you do this until kingdom come.
Kricket is dealing with a huge personal problem, there are children involved who may have suffered emotional abuse, and you’re bitching about the formatting of her post?
Get some perspective, dude.
Kricket, you’re doing good. My only suggestion for doing better is that the children should be together. Hang in there. The children will thank you for being there for them.
When I was 14 years old my parents put me in rehab. I hated AA, especially as an atheist, and 6 months after my release stopped going to meetings. Nearly 20 years later, I am in therapy and realizing that most of the shit I have gone through is the result of two things: my mental illness (bipolar type II) and my fucked up family. I have made tremendous strides lately and I have to say that the above “prayer” is something I have latched onto. I feel like I understand it better every day.
You are a good person for doing everything you’re doing, but you are also a victim of this situation and of your family, just like your sister’s children are victims. I wouldn’t bother reading the big book. I would however, consider seeking some counseling for yourself. Your family obviously puts you (and you put yourself) under tremendous pressure and I think learning to see the situation more clearly will help you through this.
I wish you all the best through this difficult time.
Want to understand drug addiction? This quote seems simplified, but really, really think about it.
Drug User: All of their belongings start to disappear.
Drug Addict: All of your belongings start to disappear.
It is often difficult for people to imagine the kind of pain and suffering that goes on in this world, even right now in some of the most affluent areas. Anything that can make that pain disappear for a few hours or even add a little pleasure to a person in that situation becomes a welcome option.
I pick up the younger daughter any time I get the chance. Her father and I have been in close contact and are trying to work together as best we can. Sadly his marriage is failing because of all of the drama.
The girls really don’t get along all that well and if the father and I don’t bring it up the girls would probably never miss each other sadly.
Simple sibling issues that my sister let get worse and worse to where the oldest pretty well resents the youngest. And the youngest doesn’t like the oldest because she has been mean to her.
Bio dad of the youngest has a good job and so the youngest daughter has a nicer advantage of things in life. The oldest daughters father has never been in the picture so the oldest only has my sister.
No easy way to explain what my sister did, but she didn’t handle the jelousy very well. She made it worse by going on about how the bio dad of the younger daughter would hand her everything just because they had money and doesn’t it suck for you basically.
Having to give up her food to the youngest toward the end only made that dislike worse. The girls didn’t ask about each other for the first month they were apart.
I am hoping to build a bond between them and repair as much damage as we can. The oldest needs to realise that yes the youngest has a few more things but that doesn’t one any better than the other. It’s not like the bio dad is going overboard spoiling her either. Just simple stuff like they have a dog at his house she has a skateboard over there and in the summer they travel to go to pow-wows.
It’s a tricky slope that I have had to deal with myself with my oldest daughters and we eventually worked it out that they are three different households. Oldest is step and lives with her mom second oldest is mine but visits her dad where for the longest time she was an only child and she had stuff at her dads that we couldn’t afford here because we had a larger family. She understood that and didn’t brag up the things she had there.
My oldest still knew that the second oldest had these things and was a bit jelous I explained to my oldest that even at her moms house she had things that the other children here didn’t have because each household is different and we all just need to be happy for one another and does it really matter who as what?
Anyway, I haven’t heard from my sister in a week after she made all kinds of threats last Monday about calling DHS and having her daughter removed from my house.
It has been a little less stressful in this last week, but I stress now over not knowing if she is at least alive. At least when we were bickering on the phone and she sounded like crap and threatening me I still knew she was breathing.
I sleep with my phone in my hand waiting for a phone call that she is in the hospital, the morgue, jail, or hopefully that she really wants help and for me to come and get her.
A small update…
Yesterday I called to leave a message for the youngest daughter at her dad’s house just checking on her and to see how her weekend went.
My sister called me back from that number. I’m not sure what to think of that.
Evidently the bio-dad is letting her stay there in hopes that she will stay clean while she is in his house. But this isn’t helping his marriage much. His wife filed for divorce shortly after all the original drama started. I’m sure this has probably made it final.
I just don’t trust it. I’m worried about the situation. She again swears she wants to get help and that she was going to go to CADs next week. I questioned why so long and not why yesterday or today and again with excuses. I offered her a ride whenever she was ready to go and she said she might take me up on that offer.
I honestly hope she does call tomorrow for a ride. I would be there in a second to help her. I just can’t trust her yet. I’m worried that the girls and I will get our hopes up and she won’t follow through. But I want to be there for her.
I hate this feeling.
Hi Kricket,
I wish I could tell you that things should look up from here, but the reality from my experience (ex-wife, older brother) is that it can take years for someone to both recognize an addiction and get strong enough or should I fall low enough to seek help. Sometimes the best you can hope for is just to minimize the damage that that person does. Just try and stay strong and be there for her kids.
Oh, geez, Kricket. That doesn’t sound very good, either… 
She pretty much fucking stole a car today.
How far down is rock bottom? Can anyone describe that?