Hi everyone. Its been a year and a half since I last posted. I have a 25 year old daughter who has been battling addiction for 3 years now. In the last year and a half she has been through 5 rehabs and 11 sober living facilities. I had to cancel her health insurance last May after finding out that she had literally found a way to use her health insurance to get money to support her addiction. Apparently in California rehabs have "Unaffiliated contractors" who will give addicts a referral bonus of $1500 to go to the rehab they are "unaffiliated with" My daughter would go through the program for 30 days and get the money and then relapse and go to the next facility when the money ran out! I had managed to go through her entire addiction without ever enabling her financially and when I actually thought she was ready to get help I got her on my insurance and ended up enabling her for an entire year!!!!! Not to mention that i had paid out of pocket about $40,000 in copays!
I am so angry! I have never hit one of my children (except for spanking) never even wanted to, but when I found out about that if I could have I would have beat the living hell out of her!
I hadn't spoken to her for about 3 months until tonight. She called me from jail. I had known she was arrested almost a week ago and was waiting for her call... it usually takes a while for her to get up the nerve. We talked for a whole 6 minutes before she hung up on me. She played the victim...AGAiN, and once she knew that I had already investigated and I knew what was going on and she couldn't lie to me and that I was going to do everything in my power to keep her locked up she hung up on me.
I am sure it came as no surprise to her, I am very hard on this kind of stuff and she knows it. There is one HUGE difference in me and most if not all of the other parents/ spouses on here.... I was an addict for 11 years, I have been clean for about 13.5 years. I hit rock bottom and know what it takes to come out of it. I have very little sympathy for an addict and I accept 0% of the responsibility that mine puts on me for her addiction. I was so afraid of enabling her that I moved 900 miles from Kentucky to Texas to make sure that it would be difficult for me to and to distance myself enough from it that I could sleep at night.
I once had a dream that I went and bought some heroine (her drug of choice) and shot up in front of my daughter and PURPOSELY ODed so she would have to inject me with NARCAN and save me. Only when she tried to save me she failed and I died in her arms. I wanted her to understand what it was like to go through a fraction of what we do every day in hopes that my death would somehow save her. When i woke up I actually found myself considering that as an option ( I know how ridiculous that is) because nothing else has worked. I would gladly give my life to save hers if I knew it would work. I don't think it would, so Instead I opted to tell her about it and it worked.... for a little while, she stayed clean about 3 months.
I am just so frustrated at this point. I am angry and I hate the person my daughter has become but I love the soul that is within her. I hate having to be this type of parent. i hate never knowing if the next call will be the last. i hate that i know that it is possible to stay clean and she just refuses too.
Sorry my rant was so long. I have a lot of pinned up anger that I needed to get out. I could go on for hours but will spare you.
Have a blessed evening.
thanks for sharing. I hope my son can someday say he has several years of sobriety. sadly, tonight, he can not say that. he has been struggling for about 5 yrs. has had periods of 3-4 months sober. recently was sober jun-sept. he was going to meetings, IOP, dr, counselor, had a job for about 6 weeks. then things fell apart one by one. some his doing, some just life stuff that he cant emotionally handle. he pulled away from meetings and recovery center. he made progress and is not in bad shape now, but not clean either. from the observer it looks like he could get back on track. but for him it is too hard. we are all so tired of it. It took a lot of effort 5 months ago to get him to go to hospital. he was compliant w everything, but did keep telling me about the depression that did not get better. now he says he wont go back to any programs. disappointing that he can not see that life was better before relapsing. to him being sober is a struggle. to me being addicted is a struggle.
Wow, I would be super mad, also. The selfishness never ceases to amaze me. Money spent for them is never appreciated. A couple years ago, when he was 17 my son started with the manipulating and lying. He continues.
We stopped paying for everything when he quit his job. It still amazes me how manipulative he is in regards to money.
All we can do is detach. As you said, we are truly powerless. I needed to hear your post. I am in the same boat.
We stopped paying for everything when he quit his job. It still amazes me how manipulative he is in regards to money.
All we can do is detach. As you said, we are truly powerless. I needed to hear your post. I am in the same boat.
I feel your pain. You get manipulated and disappointed over and over again. You get so mad at them on so many levels. But you also get mad at yourself for falling for it. I think you did the best thing creating some distance when you moved. Being in the middle of their addict lifestyle is very hard. Hard to say no anyway but even harder up close and personal. I have a long list of things my son has done that I cant get over. We have been living this nightmare a long time. They dont really see us so they dont care what we go through. Their world gets smaller and life becomes all about them.
