A girl well on her way to death.

[MaryleeII]

Originally Posted by Cape Cod Todd

I know a young woman, 19 who is slowly killing herself. I only know of her through a distant marriage but my heart goes out to her. She has been in and out of trouble with the law, skipping school, hanging out with a bad crowd and abusing alcohol and drugs since she was a early teen. She has been in and out of programs and has been through counselors and psychologists.
Today she has a severe drinking problem. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital after her boyfriend beat her up a bit and the Doctor asked her if she had been drinking antifreeze. ? She has scars and cuts all over herself and is doing harm to her kidneys. Her shrink stopped her meds because she was mixing them with booze and the combination is destroying her kidneys.

Her father is a dope. Her mother has gone to the court to try and get her into a 30 day program but since she is 19 she can check herself out. The court couldn't do anything because they didn't consider her enough of a danger to herself. The counselor said "give her one more chance" .. She has been getting chance after chance since she was 14.
This girl has mastered the lie and it seems the counselors are useless. They are either over worked or they just do enough to get a paycheck.

She had a part time job at a gas station but I think she lost that. She is out of the boyfriends house because when they responded to the domestic abuse call they found a bunch of drugs and arrested thee guys that were there but not the girl who was sent to the hospital. Her sister picked her up and took her back to her place but she trashed it looking for booze so she got kicked out of there. I don't know where she is living now. Without a jerk of a boyfriend who was buying her booze I suspect she will turn to stealing or prostitution to get it.

We all fear she is going to end up dead from drinking. What can be done for this girl? I think she really has to hit rock bottom before she changes her ways if she lives through the fall.

Look, we all go sometime This "girl" wants this---she wants to be a victim, she enjoys being beat up. You can never get a drunk sober, she's her own worse enemy. What can you do? Buy one of those burial policies you see advertised on TV

[Cape Cod Todd]

Thanks all for the advice.
I haven't seen this girl in years. I have a relative that married a guy and this is his daughter from a previous marriage.
I first met this girl when she was 7 or so and I knew she was going to be a handful as she grew older but had no idea.
She was a whiny kid who cried at the drop of a hat and was overly cautious to people around her. Her acting out started around 13-14 when she would sneak out of the house at night to hang with her loser friends in the park. She was in with a bunch of bad kids and skipped school all the time. Drinking, Drugs, Sex and getting into trouble with the Police was her way and her parents really dropped the ball and let her run wild.

I blame her parents and my relative that should have stepped in to at least be a voice of reason and a friend to this girl.
I do wonder if she was sexually abused when she was little.
The blame is a lack of parenting.
The father is waiting for a phone call that his daughter was found dead. What a waste.

[AK-Cathy]

Thanks for providing the rest of the story. It rarely happens unless it's one of those threads where the OP argues throughout with people offering advice.

My sister and her husband had to have their son essentially hauled across country by force to the woods in Oregon to stay at a treatment facility for troubled teens. Fortunately he was a minor and not too far gone. He too was a handful as a youngster and I know my sister had trouble accepting him because of it. For the record I was like that too as a child but I found my way with the help of my friends, counseling as an adult and a few angels along the way. I guess that is why I have so much empathy for people in this situation, both the troubled souls and the bystanders.

[mochamajesty]

Originally Posted by mrcnkwcz

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.

Yes, giving up is the answer when you expend all of your emotional and physical energy. How far are you supposed to go? If both of you are pulled under, you both drown. And now the drug has taken several lives.

And do not equate self preservation with nor caring. You care a lot, at first. Then when you discover your emotions being used against you, eventually you care from a distance.

All of the empathy in the world won't help an addict who is not ready. And it is sickening to put that responsibility on the loved one.

[AKtoWAtoUT]

Originally Posted by mrcnkwcz

So the consensus of this thread is do nothing and let her continue to suffer and eventually die.

Gotta love humanity.

Better one person suffer than two. It IS a cold thought process, I agree, but think of it this way:

Would you try to save someone hanging from a cliff with a 2000 foot drop? Yeah, of course...

But, what if they have already let go, and are 20 feet down, in freefall?

Would you jump off and try to save them, even though there's no way you will have an effect on the situation?

Sure, they could survive the fall either way- but the chances are ridiculously slim and you would more than likely destroy yourself in the process.



Too many people have tried to save troubled people like this and failed. I think it'd be destructive to give the OP any advice on how to help someone that never wants help.

[Wannabeliber]

Cape Cod Todd
The only person who can fix her is her
Everybody has problems
Everybody has what they think are solutions to their problems
Nobody likes to be told they are wrong in what they're doing
They have to find out for themselves if what they are doing is wrong
You can herd a person about as easily as you can herd cats
There's nothing you can do except throw your hands up and go on with your business
If they come to you for advice or want help, that's when you plant the seed of new ideas in their head if they are accepting new ideas
If that is less your style you can put the person in a straight-jacket
I have long given up on lecturing people on what's right or wrong
I don't have patience to herd humans who talk past me about their problems and not even wanting to hear solutions
I just don't care and neither should you unless they are begging for advice on what to do

[Cape Cod Todd]

The latest that I heard through the grape vine is that she is really lashing out at the people that are closest to her and accusing them of screwing up her life. I think they did but what she is really mad at is she has lost her boyfriend that was buying her the booze. He was over 21.

If she can't get the booze I wonder what she will turn to? Perhaps her bottom is getting close?

I agree with most of the advice given. There is nothing that I can do about this situation except listen if someone cares to talk. I'm not going to sacrifice myself for her. I'm too far away but her parents should be trying to help her more than they are.