Regrets,

Oh boy this is a situation isn't it? I'm not sure how addicted your daughter is, but if she is doing crank or crystal meth I don't see how she would be able to go with you to your daughters and not do drugs while she is there - she would go through withdrawal if she is a daily drug user.

I want to tell you about my friend and you can take what you want from the story but there is similarities. My friends daughter was an alcoholic and addict. Her daughter lost her own daughter at one point due to her drug use. She got rid of her husband, cleaned up, and got her daughter back. Although she had custody of her daughter, she was a nurse who worked third shift, so my friend (grandma) kept her daughter for her pretty much full time.

In addition to this, my friend paid the mortgage on her daughters house and many of her expenses. A couple of years ago I saw her daughter on halloween (my niece and her daughter would trick or treat together). I started to talk to her about my alcoholism and that I was sober and participating in AA. She told me she wanted to go but she couldn't drive at the time and it was an issue. I gave her my number and told her I'd be happy to take her to a meeting. I also told her of a meeting that was at noontime near her so that she could walk to the meeting. I never heard from her - I did try to call her a couple of times.

About 8 months later I saw my friend waiting for the bus to go home from work, so I pulled over and picked her up. Now, my friend at this point was 65 years old and still working so that she could support her daughter and granddaughter (even though her daughter could work). She started to tell me what was going on.

Her daughter apparently got involved with her ex-husband again. The daughter and ex-husband falsified documents to take out a second mortgage on the house for $10,000. Daughter relapsed into drugs and alcohol again. So, my friend sent her to Florida to a treatment facility. While there, her ex-husband came down and got her out. He was violating parole and my friend knew, so the police were waiting for him when he got back and he's in jail again.

Oh ya, her daughter comes back pregnant by him once again. She has the baby, which is immediately taken by the state and place with my friends niece. Her daughter goes back to work and is fired for suspicion of taking drugs from patients. She then gets in a DUI. So my friend tells me that she is paying for three lawyers. One for her daughters job, one for her nursing license, and one for herself because the car was in her name at the time of the accident.

This is all a very extreme case of a person enabling an addict. I begged my friend to turn her daughter out. That if she didn't hit bottom she would never admit her disease. She said that she had lined up a treatment center that is a very long term one and she said her daughter told her she couldn't go there because it was for prostitutes, homeless women, and women who are coming out of incarceration. I told my friend if she kicked her out - she would be homeless (also my sister heard the rumors of her prostituting around town for druges). My friend would not do it.

Two weeks later I opened the paper and her daughter was in the obituaries. I went to the wake and it was the first time I had seen her daughter since the October before and I was shocked of how awful she looked - how drugs took her down so quickly. Her father, who at this point was 80 years old, was sitting in a chair. As I offered my condolences he looked at me and said "what did I do wrong? What else could I have done?". It broke my heart. I told him that he did nothing wrong that no matter what he did she would do what she did.
My friend told me that her daughter mentioned a week before that she wanted to call me to go to a meeting - whether she meant it or not who knows?

In the back of my mind I thought - if they had kicked her out and cut her off - would it have made a difference? There is no answer to that. It may have or she still may have overdosed. Oh yes, what happened was that my friend went to her daughters house and found her dead on the bedroom floor. She had accidentally? overdosed on heroin and cocaine. My friend who is now 67 has custody of her 14 year old granddaughter. Her grandson (the baby that was taken away) was permanently adopted by her niece, so her granddaughter and her brother can see each other.

I wanted to tell you this story because when you are embroiled in the drama of a family member with a drug addiction you can tend to think it's not as bad as it may be and something like this can't happen to you. But it can.

Your daughter needs help and fast. I send you all good energies and thoughts and hope that she can turn this around. You can't - - but you can choose to not support her until she decides to get help.

Tranquility