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Hipaa regulations have severally stifled family members involvement in their quest for forced treatment of those who are clearly damaging themselves and others around them. These laws did not exist 30 years ago there abouts. This is one reason millions sleep in the streets.
In the 1970s we had a family member who was so strung out on drugs he thought he was Jesus Christ. Dressed like and walked with a staff. We knew this person was going insane. We had him committed by force.
Some years later he thanked us for saving his life. If that same situation happened today, most likely nothing could be done because of his privacy rights and his actions likely would have been interpreted as non life threatening, non violent.
That's not true, luckily. If a person is so mentally ill that he doesn't understand that he needs treatment, or too mentally ill to take care of himself, he can be checked in somewhere against his will. If it happens enough times, he can be put under court-ordered outpatient treatment and have the choice before him to either go back to the hospital over and over or stay on meds and in therapy so he can be free to live his life.
But we're talking about substance abuse here, and those laws do NOT apply to substance abusers. We had a controversy over that here a few years ago. A homeless guy was very deliberately, overtly drinking himself to death because he hated his life and a hospital ER team was trying to force him into an inpatient unit, but it doesn't fly legally at all and they had to stand by and do nothing.
So the consensus of this thread is do nothing and let her continue to suffer and eventually die.
Gotta love humanity.
That's a repulsive take on what people are saying.
OP, I've been there, done that. You can make an expression of love and hope, but draw a clear line for what you can and cannot live with. It's okay to say, "I love you, but I cannot watch you destroy yourself and cannot let your chaos ruin my life." You can't MAKE anyone want to change. You can't force recovery. She does need to hit her own individual "bottom"--none of us can say what it is. And, unfortunately, some never find it, but they continue to chase it. It's heartbreaking, but it's true. And one thing my loved-one-in-recovery has said to me is that I can only keep my side of the street clean. Meaning, I can't go over and clean up all the trash, plant pretty flowers, paint the house, then expect it all to be maintained by the one who has no stake in it. So, you keep your heart open, you protect yourself from harm, you keep your side of the street clean--and then you hope like hell that it will eventually turn around.
To hell with good intentions (and also to hell with mindless adherence to protocol)...what's [most likely to be] effective is to truly attempt to understand the person in question and their individual needs/desires. If you're dismissive, the person will not be helped. If you're not dismissive but also not thoughtful, the person will not be helped. You need to care and be smart about your concern. The latter is where most people fail (assuming they haven't already failed to meet the 'caring' criterion).
Take it from me, someone who's been on both sides of this. In fact, I still wage a daily battle against something(s) which might conventionally be termed alcoholism and major depression. I'm more intelligent than anyone who's ever attempted (by order of court or otherwise) to 'help' me, and the lessons I've learned from the ineffectiveness of the attempted interventions of others (halfhearted as most of those may have been) I have attempted to apply in the service of a couple other people I know (or think I know) who are fighting their own battles. Ultimately, they may be more easily saved than I...and I'm wise enough to know this. Individuals need individualized care, and there is (currently) more nuance-based art than science involved in the providing of such care. Mental health care in this country in 2015 is absolutely laughable, assuming you're the sort of person satisfied with laughing in the face of tragedies which you should be attempting to mitigate.
One of my best friends from high school is around my age (30; I'm 29), schizophrenic, anorexic, probably the most competent copy editor in existence when not delusional, and currently 24 days sober. I take a small, small amount of credit for the last bit. Even so, his battles are many and will not end until his consciousness mercifully ceases to exist. But do you know what his biggest complaint ultimately is? Alienation. It has been postulated that the biggest risk factor for [losing a battle to] addiction is not genetic but rather being alienated. Of course, in some sense alienation is genetic--my IQ is 160+; of course I feel alienated. This guy I just described grew up in the black ghetto of Buffalo as a homosexual devotee of the proper usage of English--as a dictionary-clutching third grader at a failing inner city school, I'm guessing he felt alienated. Even now in DC, I know those feelings of alienation persist for him, as strongly as they ever have.
Look up the rat studies where sociality (or lack thereof) was the biggest predictor for overcoming versus succumbing to addiction. Same logic applies to humans.
Giving up on people is never the ****ing answer. We may not currently have satisfactory answers in the tricky realm of mental health (thanks, blood-brain barrier!), but giving up is the one thing guaranteed not to work. Empathy goes further than you might expect, as we are emotionally driven creatures after all. The 'emotional dog and its rational tail' and all that. An honest attempt to understand and empathize with the circumstances of a suffering human being is quite underrated in an age where psychiatry is granted far more authority than they've yet earned. But many seem to lack the capacity to empathize, a capacity which admittedly does require more skill than people realize, or want to realize.
Guess I should cross-post this in the "an addict dies. How do you feel?" thread.
No one is saying give up. But, from personal experience with the mentally ill (my mother is severely mentally ill and often institutionalized, many friends suffered from drugs, etc), as well as when I struggled with my own demons (I came close to death from anorexia years ago), what I have learned from both sides of the coin, but mostly as the person that needed help, was that nothing anyone could say or do would help until I had hit bottom and wanted the help (for me that was a doctor telling me my organs were shutting down and I was close to death if I didn't eat). And even then, once I wanted the help, finding someone that had the experience to help someone with a condition as severe as my own was a challenge, so to not lose hope that I would find someone knowledgeable enough to help me out of the hole.
I agree we need to keep caring. I agree in the power of human interaction. I agree with a lot of your points. And I'm not saying give up on someone, ever, but I am saying that in my experience, there is little anyone can do to have much, if any, effect, until #1, the person is ready to admit their problem, whatever it is, #2, find the proper support team with enough experience to help them, and then #3, do the hard work themselves.
At the end of the day, the rest of us are just cheerleaders. Cheerleaders are important, but I don't think they are all the person needs to overcome these challenges. Their problems are often much bigger than that, and even bigger than some medical teams, depending on their experience.
I'm so sorry -- obviously, this girl means something to you, or you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of posting such a detailed question.
Unfortunately, change has to come from within -- and at this point, she has no reason to change. She's going to have to have a compelling reason to change in order to be able to do the work necessary to turn her life around. It's a shame that her parents weren't able to get her the help she needed while she was still a minor -- as an adult, their options to intercede are very limited. :-(
I don't know if there's anything you CAN do, in reality. You can offer her a safe place to stay, as long as she's not using -- but realistically, she's probably going to use. You can offer her a safe place to stay as long as she is going to AA or some other program. She may or may not take you up on it. Ask her if she needs any help in maintaining birth control -- the LAST thing she needs right now is to bring a baby into the world.
But I agree with a previous poster -- if this young woman is important to you, you yourself might benefit from going to Al-Anon and learning how to cope with her behavior and try to understand what motivates her. it's heartbreaking to see someone you care for go through such self-destructive behaviors. Just remember, you have the vision to see the kind of person she could be, without the alcohol. She doesn't -- nothing in her history gives her that kind of insight. Sometimes, they just have to believe that there really ARE alternatives. But that involves a great deal of self-examination and therapy. :-(
OP, all you can do is be there if and when she asks. It can destroy you when you try to save someone who is determined to live in addiction. Let her know that you care and will help, and then, it is really just up to her. The poster who is speaking of his high IQ and empathy doesn't understand that most of us have been there too. Many of us do not feel that we fit in, or we feel that we are alone. As one becomes an adult, that feeling seems to overwhelm many of us. Some of us find ways to cope and be content, while others self medicate. Mental illness is the most overlooked illness in the US, and reform needs to happen soon. If she was someone I cared about, I would do my best to let her know over and over again that I was there for her, and that she was loved. She will have to take the next step.
I know of a similar story. The daughter of a friend of my wife. I never met the girl but I heard storys about her from the time that she was a bright, (very intelligent), interesting, lovely young girl of 6 or 8, through drinking, drugs, arrests and unplanned pregnancy's in her teens and twentys to her end at 31. This is so sad. I don't have any answers. So sorry.
It would be great if we could crawl inside someone's head and reprogram it to eliminate self destructive patterns but we can't. I went through something similar with a good friend that finally drank herself to death at 59. The friendship ended way before she died because I was just done with the dysfunction, and heartache of watching someone I cared about not give a crap about anything but the next drink. You can't change this girls self destructive ways, you can only change the way you deal with her. Or not which would be my choice. I'm done with chemically dependent people and all of the dysfunction that goes along with it. That's not to say that I wouldn't help someone that was ready to help themselves. I would, but until then stay on your side of the fence and I'll stay on mine.
A friend of mine had a 26 year old daughter (who has a child) that had drinking and drug problems. Her mother took custody of her grandchild years ago. This girl too was beaten up several times by boyfriends (or whatever relationship they had). This girl was down that dark path, in and out of rehab, etc. She prostituted herself for booze and drug money. For years this went on. Her problems was a major issue in why my friend's marriage failed, with both my friend and his ex trying to work with their daughter. Several weeks ago the girl committed suicide.
My point is, unless you jumped in and took this girl away from her life and made her part of yours and devoted 24 hours a day to her, there is nothing you can do. And regardless no matter what anyone does there are no guarantees. It's hard seeing someone you know in this situation.
Last edited by metalmancpa; 12-14-2015 at 06:43 PM..
The first thing I see is that she has classic symptoms arising out of child sex abuse.
The person I tried to save came from a loving, caring family. He was a smart, cute, young man who seemed to have it all. He tried alcohol and drugs as a young teen, and he got hooked. From then on he fought addiction until his death from a drug overdose. Friends, family, and everyone who knew him tried to help this beautiful young man. We all loved him and made sure he knew it, but he was on a pathway to destruction and wouldn't listen to anyone. He was not abused in any way. What is his reason for choosing to slowly kill himself?
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