Why is my friend’s daughter acting like this?
I may not have worded my question correctly but I don’t know what else to do. My friend’s daughter Valerie is 25 years old. She is a beautiful young woman has wonderful loving and caring parents who try their hardest to be the best parents they can be. Valerie has been doctor shopping. We looked through her purse and found 4 pharmacy cards. She says that she has back pain and needs to take medicine to make it feel better but we spoke to a doctor who says that she does not need to be on 17 different medications. This all started when Valerie turned 12. She would sneak out of the house and drink. She started prostituting when she was 12 and has used this money to buy drugs. She would tell people she was 18 and have sex with guys as old as 30. When she got released from juvenile detention, she would run away again and have sex with older guys. Her mom did press charges against these men but she would not stop. She started smoking crystal meth when she was 13. Her mom put her in rehab many times which had no effect because she would do drugs. She also did Crack, Cocaine, Heroin, Percocet, Exocine, Desyrel, Xanax, Marijuana. When she was 14, she got pregnant with her now 11 year old son Daniel. When the baby was born, he had to be moved to a level 1 pediatric care facility because he was born addicted to drugs. When she was 16, she got pregnant with her 9 year old son James. James is his middle name. His first name is Anthony but we called him James because Anthony was named after Tony, someone who was busted selling cocaine. She got pregnant again at 17 with her 7 year old son Michael. We are afraid she might be pregnant right now. She is an alcoholic, has no job, doesn’t have custody of her children, homeless, never finished high school and her parents don’t know what to do with her.
someone needs to lock her in rehab. This is NOT healthy for her kids. They should go to someone who takes care of them in a safer environment.
It sounds as though she is addicted to a variety of things. She needs medical help, of course, but unless and until SHE decides to take action, nothing you or her family can do to make that happen.
So sorry!
she might need to go see a psychiatrist
WOW!! Your friends’ daughter’s problems sound major serious!! Too serious to resolve here?? She needs professional help. She has 3 children and you say she doesn’t have custody?? They must be in foster care?? Grandparents look after them?? You say she is a beautiful young woman?? Physically beautiful?? With all of those drugs, she won’t stay physically beautiful. I feel sorry for your friends. If I had a grown child like that…. I would try to put her out of my mind….spend time with friends, work, travel hobbies….what can you do?? It’s up to the adult child to solve her problems.
It’s good that she doesn’t have custody of her children. That was my main concern.
Make sure that no one is supporting her habit by giving her money or permitting her to live at home with them (because she’ll just steal and steal and steal to get high). this does indeed mean you’ll be leaving her on the streets, but that’s HER choice.
What you and her parents can then do is let her know that if she wants help you’re there for her. Refuse to let any conversations you have with her include the use of drugs, and do not deal with her at all when she’s high or wasted (explain to her in no uncertain terms that you will only talk to her when she’s sober). Also explain to her that you’ll only meet her in a public place (not at a home where she can steal things) and you will never give her money so long as drugs are in the picture.
Then let her go her own merry way, which may include her dying on the streets, addicted to drugs.
Because here’s the important part: An addict will not give up their drugs if you beg them, confront them, threaten them, beat them, or take them away. An addict will go through rehab only to jump back onto the first thing they can find to get them high the second they get out.
An addict will only give up their crap IF and ONLY IF they choose to do so themselves. If she’s not choosing to do so, there’s NOTHING you can do.
Why is she like this? Well if they’d caught her at 12, put her into therapy and found out what her major issues were back then (which may include things that her parents aren’t admitting to you – like maybe she was abused or raped) and dealt with them, it’s possible none of this would have happened.
But by the time the drugs started, she stopped thinking about how miserable she was. She stopped being their daughter. She was living from high to high, and clearly had no issues with doing whatever she could to get high again.
If that makes no sense to you, consider the story of the lab rats who were given the ability (via a microchip in their brains) to stimulate their own pleasure centers by touching a button. They did so to the exclusion of food, sex, water…everything. They died miserable and uncontrollably hitting that button. That’s what drugs do – they make you feel such intense pleasure that everything else loses meaning.
That’s why they’re so addictive, and that’s why they’re so dangerous. It’s not that they make you feel funny…and then miserable if you don’t take them – it’s that you feel so very good on them that even if there was no withdrawal, you’d STILL take them. You’d take them until you died (which is why so many people overdose – trying to get a bigger high each time), and you wouldn’t care if you did.
But to reemphasise, she’s no longer a functioning human being – she’s an addict and the only thing that will pull her out of her chain at this point is to make the choice herself. Because otherwise, any actions that you or her parents take will only be a momentary delay of her return to the streets and the drugs and the life she leads right now.
To be honest, I wish that my “don’t take drugs” lessons from various cops and teachers had explained it to me this way. Because I never got it for the longest time!