New member - Just found out 15 y/o difficult child using alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes

[pinevalley]

Welcome to this community! As you see from the responses here, there are many parents who truly understand what you are going through right now. I found this site late one night when I was desperate to find help for my son. That was a few years ago, and I am constantly amazed at the wisdom and thoughtful advice that is given by the many other parents on this board. Just keep posting and reading the comments. You will learn a lot just from reading the responses from many of the posts.

It is OK to be upset and in shock about your daughter's substance abuse. I'm sure that you never thought in a million years that your daughter would choose to use drugs. You still have time to help your difficult child, and there is always hope. That is the good news. It is really good that you are determined to do whatever is necessary to help your difficult child. You are already doing so well now, because you are not in denial that your difficult child could ever use drugs.

My son also starting using pot and smoking cigarettes when he was in high school. My h and I did not let our difficult child smoke cigarettes in our house, and we were constantly nagging him to give up such a nasty habit. However we finally realized that all our nagging about the cigarettes was doing no good at all, and so we decided not to fight with him about this habit. By this time we were much more worried about the drug use, and his cigarette smoking was not as serious as the illegal drug use. Unfortunately my difficult child started using drugs every day and then he started stealing to support his habit. He was arrested recently, and he is now is jail for theft. He is learning the hard way that getting arrested and going to jail is one of the consequences of using illegal drugs.

I am sending you good wishes for strength in this battle of substance abuse with your daughter. HUGS...

 

[susiestar]

Hi and welcome, CG! I come to this issue and forum with a different perspective than a parent. I am the adult sister of an alcoholic who started drinking when he was 12 adn I was 9. I knew, and told, and was punished for lying because he lied a ton better than I did. We are both adult grandkids of alcoholics and he has mental health issues other than sub abuse but won't admit to anything but adhd which is the tiniest part of his problems. I even gave up seeing the only psychiatrist in our town for my own therapy because she (psychiatrist) couldn't see us both because conflict of interest because most of my issues came from him and things he did to me that were abusive and the incredible codependency of our mother with him. My kids are 12, 16 and 20 and so far we have not had this issue. But they have seen their uncle drunk and sober and dealt with bad things from him in both states.

I totally agree that there are other issues driving her sub abuse issues. Get her medications tweaked and don't trust her. I am sure you are aware of adult children of alcoholics, and that other holics like workaholics are similar in behaviors. adult grandchldren, which I am as neither of my parents had addiction issues but both were adult children and adult grands, have their own problems too. I know of one book about adult grandchildren, and it might be good for you to read it and to think about it in regard to her. it is far easier to stop indulging in the substance than to change the behavior.

MWM is right about the positive groups being slower to include new people in their groups. the druggies accept anyone pretty much no matter what, but the 'good' kids have standards and tight groups and don't warm to new people as easily because they are busy and involved and invested and don't always want the bother. so it is hard to get involved with the good kids and the druggies will accept anyone.

don't trust her easily. Make her get some help for people who use substances, not just see her counselor and be in activities with the 'good' groups. she NEeDS the help for sub abusers in addition to the supervision and other things. While the 12 steps are the same for any group pretty much, the actual help for those who are addicts is different than for families to some degree. she clearly needs that, and a sponsor is one of the most powerful tools an addict has because they can spot the bs long before anyone who wasn't an addict can.

I am so sorry that she made these choices, and I hope that your experience iwll help. just don't forget that she needs you to be her mom and not her therapist/sponsor/sub abuse counselor. She can have many of those in her life but only one mom - and that role is crucial and far more important. Get others to do the other roles and focus on being her mom. I know it sounds strange, but you can't do all of those things for one person. she needs different people to fill those roles. Just like you could be the counselor but not the sponsor for a client, Know what I mean?? she can't ever be yoru client - she needs that tough but unconditional love that only a parent can give her.

Welcome - you have found an amazing group and a fabulous source of info and support that will never judge you. kick your pants if you need it, but never judge you!

 

[CharlestonGal]

Thank you all so much for taking the time to share your thoughts and support with me. I can't tell you how much it means to me. I am still feeling a great deal of shock, disappointment and sadness that my formerly easy child daughter has turned into someone who so easily lies to me, lies to her father, and chooses such pointless and destructive and illegal activities over the honest and positive things she used to do. It is no exaggeration to say that I feel like my daughter has died and in her place now is a stranger I don't even know. It is so profoundly disturbing and I find myself not even wanting to be near her at times. The fact that she appears to be so blase about the whole thing doesn't help. She's acting like nothing at all has happened, like it's just another day. Can she really not appreciate the degree to which she has upset and disappointed us? I sit here in tears, yet all is right in her world as long as she's allowed to text her friends.

I am just beside myself.

 

[Nancy]

Oh boy CG do I understand. Our difficult child had it so good, two parents who truly loved and supported everything she did, a sister who doted on her and just wanted to have a sister, a nice house, a stable family, vacations, good values, an opportunity to be really successful in her life.....everything. And yet she turned to peers who were losers and that is who she wanted to be with. She turned her back on everything we stood for and for a long time I was angry. How could she do that to us?????? It wasn't until just recently that I came to terms with the fact that she didn't do it to us, she did it to herself. I carried the hurt and pain of her rejection around with me like a badge. I now realize she is hurting herself, causing herself pain, doing things that she will never be able to take back, making decisions that change the course of her life and may even kill her.

I think the best thing you have going for you is to keep her in counseling with someone that can help her recover herself, her self esteem, her own goals and passions in life. My difficult child had no passions in life, except for risky behaviors. We know where she got hers since we adopted her and her background is filled with addictions and risky behaviors. She was never able to be helped by any of the counseling she had over the years because her inherited behaviors got in the wway. But your daughter has a change to figure out why she doesn't feel right in her skin and make the changes she needs to make to fix that.

I look back every day and wonder how my difficult child could give up what she could have. It makes no sense to me. But that is what addiction does. I hope your daughter gets the help she needs before addiction gets it's stronghold.

Nancy

 

[CharlestonGal]

Thank you, Nancy. Except for the adoption aspect of your situation, everything you said applies to us and to our difficult child. I wish science had a better understanding of the question we both have - Why, why, why throw your life away when you once had the world at your feet? difficult child has never been abused, has never been hungry, has never been neglected or gone without something she needed. She's had the best in medical care, dental care, highly rated private school, love, attention, you name it. Yet all she wants to do is spend time with her substance using "crew" hanging around aimlessly in the streets doing nothing. All her life she has wanted to be a veterinarian; that's all she talked about. Her father and I have been putting away money for years to pay for that. Yet now? She tells me she doesn't know if she wants to go off to college because she doesn't want to leave her friends. What? Are you kidding me? Right now, one of those friends is in jail and another is on house arrest. Yesterday I find out another is failing 9th grade and will be repeating it next year. That's what you want to give up your dreams for? So you can hang around in the streets or in someone's basement drinking and getting high and being essentially useless?

At one time, difficult child had such high aspirations for herself. I do not understand what happened. I just don't understand it at all. I'm preaching to the choir, I know. It's sad.

 

[Nancy]

How interesting CG, my difficult child wanted to be a veterinarian too. Although it was unrealistic to think she could make it because her grades were never good and she hated to study and has no inner drive, she could have been a vet tech. But she lasted one semester in college before being kicked out for pot and alcohol and then flunked out of community college because of drug use.

Nancy

 

[Zardo]

CG - after your last post describing the situations some of difficult children "friends" find themselves in, I am wondering if it may make sense to "shake things up" this summer and send her to Wilderness for a month or so. I will tell you, it won't "fix" everything, but it will stop the pattern of behavior and maybe get her to look at her choices. It also send a message that she is still lliving under the guidance of her parents. The aimlessness is so troubling, I can totally relate. When I was in your situation, a lot of people suggested my difficult child work at a camp for youth as a CIT or something like that. The problem was, at the level he was functioning, it would not have worked out. He was ONLY interested in being accepted by his "bad ass" crew. The way he presented himself, he never wouold have gotten in as a CIT. I know Wilderness is VERY expensive. We made the great sacrifice of using my son's college money to pay for it. The way things were going, college was not in the picture anyway. If that is not a viable option for you, I would still recommend finding something therapeutic for her to do over the summer, not just one on one counseling once a week. I know where I live, there is a wilderness style day camp for teens, an IOP at a bahavioral health clinic and a bahavioral health IOP program at a nearby hospital. If I knew then what I know now, I would have sent him to Wilderness for 4 weeks just to set the stage that "things are going to change". Then, I would have brought him home and had him attend the IOP while living at home with access to "his life" with the goal of teaching him how to make better choices within his own life. Food for thought - summer can be a time to try to make a difference, but it can also be a time of too much unstructurred time and further decline.

 

[DDD]

In retrospect (and, of course, with limited conviction) I have often wondered if a "geographic cure" would have worked for our difficult child. Unfortunately we really did not have a family member or close friend who lived in an environment that would have met our needs. on the other hand I do know two families who sent their teen to live elsewhere and had success at breaking the cycle of bonding with sorry new friends at home. We did s.a. residential treatment centers and I believe it only increased his street knowledge as he was surrounded by other dysfunctional teens. He had been the "almost perfect" student, athlete, polite teen before substances. One family I knew sent their daughter to a small town in the midwest where family lived nearby and a summer camp needed counselors. It worked for her, although she did remain with family out of state instead of returning home.

All of us explored possibilities. All of us cried alot and felt alot of anger and disappointment. There are no simple answers. When I read your post about her not wanting to leave her sorry friends...well, it brought back the reality that even though we did everything we could do...the sorry friends won. Sigh. DDD

 

[Signorina]

Thank you, Nancy. Except for the adoption aspect of your situation, everything you said applies to us and to our difficult child. ....she's had the best in medical care, dental care, highly rated private school, love, attention, you name it. Yet all she wants to do is spend time with her substance using "crew" hanging around aimlessly in the streets doing nothing. All her life she has wanted to be a veterinarian; that's all she talked about. Her father and I have been putting away money for years to pay for that....
At one time, difficult child had such high aspirations for herself. I do not understand what happened. I just don't understand it at all. I'm preaching to the choir, I know. It's sad.

You just described my son to a T. He attended a private, nurturing parochial K-8 school where he made lifelong friends (well, not lifelong anymore) and we became close to the families of those friends. He lived a charmed life - sure he would have preferred more material goods -like a sports car, vacations to Aspen etc (we live in an affluent area)-but he didn't want for anything. He had dreamed of becoming a dentist and we even had a a close friend who was willing to employ him in his dental practice over the summers as a part time job. He changed his goal to science his senior year - after shadowing our dentist friend on a few occasions and realizing he preferred labs to patients. His last 3 HS semesters he had a 4.0 GPA and he graduated with honors. He entered college with a Biochemistry major and plans to do a PharmaD to MD in medical chemistry and his dream was to develop medical treatment protocols as a chemist working with physicians. (Ironic, isn't it?) Let me be clear- this was NEVER I dream I had for him, (I am a liberal arts person), this was what HE wanted for himself. He knew he needed to graduate uni with a 3.6 to make that type of grad school a reality. We even cautioned him about making sure his goals were realistic but supported him 100%. We suggested a state school because he was planning on tons of grad school and wanted to make the money stretch as far as possible. He now holds that against us, because according to him we forced him to go to a school he hated. (he picked his school, he had other choices) Never mind the fact that he could have chosen to transfer and he HAS chosen to go back to that town despite being no longer enrolled. He has fallen so far...and blames us for all of it and I JUST DON'T GET IT!

First semester a 2.2, second semester a 2.0,. 3rd semester 0.41

Feeling your pain.

 

[BusynMember]

Please, please, please don't look for things you did wrong. I don't know if you are doing that or not, but I'm afraid that you are. You sound like you and your hub did NOTHING wrong. Peer pressure is tough for our kids (and most kids) and any child, even from a stellar family, can succumb to it.
Whoever said to do everything you can now, while she is still fifteen, I would agree with. Is there a program you can send her to? The best thing that happened to our daughter was when she had to leave the state (because she was no longer welcome in our house...we had two young kids and the cops that kept coming over scared them to death). Once she was away from her nasty group of friends, without a car, having to walk to a job at Subway (or else without money), she had a chance to think about her life without her peers threatening her if she tried to quit. Maybe a boarding school with treatment in another neck of the woods is a good idea? We never tried it because we couldn't afford it. And, although Daughter was on parole twice, social services never offered to help us help her. If you have the resources, do what you can.
But don't ever ever ever spend a moment blaming yourself for this. It is a societal problem and in my opinion not anything you did or didn't do. She knows, even at her worst moments, that you love her and will support her if she wants help. I really feel badly for you and all parents who are going through this. I will never forget the sick feeling I had for so many years...but it can turn out good. Just take one day at a time and hope for the best.

To Sig: I don't believe your son really blames you. He knows the blame is on him, but he doesn't want to be accountable for his behavior yet. You are an easy target. He's unhappy with himself and probably confused so he lashes out at you, who love him so much. I had to listen to so much venom from my daughter when she was using, but now we are close and she says she didn't mean the stuff she said to us when she was on drugs, and I think most difficult child's realize it is their faults, not ours. I also think your son will come back to you and has a good shot at cleaning up his act. I sure hope so. Sending hugs!