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Welcome to the forum, RiverWitch (love the name!)...


There is a lot going on in your post. 


So...some preliminary food for thought.


1.  They are going to do what they do...until they stop.  You very likely will have nothing to do with that, and very little influence over it (continuing or stopping).  So that's them.  Over...there.


2.  But you and your husband...now that's something you can do something about.  That is where I would focus all of my time, thought, energy.  What do you want to do?  What can you do?  What will you not do/stop doing?


It's really about what you can live with.  I think when there are little children involved, and where there are people involved that you love (stepdaughter), it's not easy to see clearly.  It's very complicated, and perhaps it should be. 


For years, I did a lot to try to help my very dysfunctional son...even before I knew he was abusing drugs and alcohol.  I did it because...well..that's what you do when you're a mom and your son is taking his own good sweet time growing up.


I would pull him out of bed, look the other way at his room, his cups all over his room, dirty dishes under the bed, talk to his teachers/meet with the school about his lack of effort, talk to him, reason with him, give him consequences...I didn't know it at the time, but he was sliding down the slope. 


He eventually went off the cliff...but for a long time I just thought he was a late bloomer. 


It took me years to stop enabling him and stop "helping" him, and it took me years to be ready to let him be homeless, let him have absolutely nothing, not know where he was, let him stay in jail, not go see him in jail, not answer his phone calls/texts/FB messages, set very firm boundaries with him, say No over and over and over again, and stick to it. 


I had to get ready.  I had to be completely sick and tired of my life and my interactions with him and I had to see that nothing I had ever done helped the situation at all...in fact, I came to believe, very strongly, that I was actually in the way of him ever having a chance to change (after all, why would he?  I always caught him before he fell), and in fact, he and I weren't good for each other at that time.


That didn't mean I cut him out of my life, that I was mad at him or that I didn't love him anymore.  I wasn't mean and I wasn't unkind.  I just learned to say no, because my own experience, over years and years, taught me that I wasn't helping...and then the experience of others, on this forum, in Al-Anon, in therapy, etc., taught me HOW to stop and how to start focusing on my own life and the things I needed to change about me and how to accept my son.


It is a journey, and it isn't easy. 


If you can start sifting through the chaos and see what you want your role to be---that is your own decision---if you have any role at all right now...I would work to get clear about that, and even write it down so you and your husband are very clear and on the same page.


Stop trying to change her.  It's a fruitless exercise.  You already know that, but it's hard to stop.


Please keep posting here.  Please read the detachment post on PE at the top of the page.  It's great.  I printed it out and read it every single day, at the beginning.


There are lots of ideas and tools you can start using to detach with love, if you want to go that route.


Warm hugs.  We're here for you.


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