Druggy neighbor question (see inside).

@john65pennington It’s your house and your rules. As you stated, she has sticky fingers and quite a long past history. I wouldn’t want her in my home, either.

Do you need to notify CPS? IMO, not if the grandparents are involved. If you notice that change, then yes, CPS should be informed.

If the children are with the grandparents and the grandparents are capable, I’d hold off on calling Children’s Services.

You’re right to ban her from your house though. You need to protect yourself and your family first.

You can ban whoever you want from your house, whatever the reason. Did you do the right thing? Would I do the same in your situation? Depends on what she’d steal from me. Would I call social services? Not if her parents are taking care of their grandkids.

I would say you handled it appropriately. So long as the grandparents are capable of caring for the children the child services is probably not necessary.

My only caveat I would interject is maybe to give her some tough love and basically point out that she needs help, BIG time.

You need to set boundries. stealing is unacceptable, so setting up a boundary right at your front door is a perfect way to tell her.
You do her no favors by pretending everything is alright.
She needs to know that she is no longer allowed in your house because she has stolen cigarettes and lighters in the past and she has stolen from her own child’s piggy bank.
Are you aligned with her parents? They need to kick her out too.
Those poor kids.
If they kick her out and she insists on taking the kids, then child protective services SHOULD be called.
As you know, Her parents should be documenting EVERYTHING!

Speaking as a recovered alcoholic, I can say that you did the right thing to ban her from the house. In my drinking days, nothing stood between me and the bottle, and from your description, she sounds like the perfect addict: nothing will stand between her and her next drug.

Sadly, it takes pain for us to change. How much? The pain of the next loss has to be greater than the pain of not getting the next fix. In every case I’ve ever encountered, that’s a lot. If losing her children is not enough, then I’m sorry to say that she still has a long way to go.

What you are practicing is called tough love. It’s the only way to go in these situations. You have to be prepared for all eventualities. She may continue down this path for many years. She may get clean. She most likely will overdose and die. Sad but true. In my 12 years of recovery, I’ve seen it all too often.

Seek, glad to see you back on Fluther. And, thanks all for you answers.
The house ban will stay, but I will hold off on Childrens Services. She has great parents and I do not understand how they can cope with her crap. Like I said, I have had enough.

Your house, your rules but I would allow her to visit but I’d keep an eye on her.
But as for her kids .. I’d ask the parents to keep an eye [more than they already do] over their grandkids.

I am just trying an idea on for size. I’m not familiar with the world of addiction, so I could be off base here. I want to question this idea of “tough love.”

I’ve been in trouble and the last thing I needed was for people to tell me to get straight or get out. That would have appealed to my innate sense of poor self worth, and I would have gotten out because I figured no one wanted me. Of course, in my case, it happened that way in the past. I wan’t addicted, but my parents were unhappy that I had no job and they kicked me out, boom! Just like that. An argument and then they kicked me out at ten in the evening with nothing but the clothes on my back.

In a way, it worked. I got a dishwashing job the next day after spending the night with a girlfriend. But over the long term, it put a breech between us that has never healed. As a result, they don’t get to see their grandchildren, except when they host a vacation or at Christmas. Tough love can have long-lasting unforeseen consequences.

What I think should be done is a kind of behavioral thing. You refuse to enable bad behavior in the way you have: not letting her visit. You might even tell her why. Not sure about that, but I think that people need reality checks. Tell her you love her, but that you need to take care of yourselves.

At the same time, offer her help in taking care of herself. Offer to help her find meetings. Offer to take her to the doctor. Offer to help her understand how to get off drugs. Offer to help her get a job after she cleans up. Offer to get her therapy.

The thing to understand is that there is a reason she turned to drugs. She has some kind of pain that was deep enough she needed to self medicate. She needs to figure out where this pain is from and learn how to deal with it so that when she starts to come off drugs, she has other coping mechanisms. She needs therapy. She needs to be with people like herself.

I suppose it would not do harm to make sure she understands possible consequences, such as losing her children. This should not be a threat. Just information. You always, I believe, want to be supportive of her health process. Not punitive if she doesn’t help herself.

I know tough love has worked for others, and maybe they are grateful to the people who hurt them in order to motivate them. I was not grateful. And my parents have paid for this in the long run. Believe me, it was not really a conscious choice. They had a chance. Then they started doing the same thing to my son as they did to me, and we could not tolerate that. My son does not need his ego crushed with disdain and name calling.

I don’t know what your family friend needs. I can’t give you any assurances. I’m just throwing this out as an alternative. You can decide if you think it might work, or toss it in the dung heap. Or you could experiment, for that matter. Whatever happens, I wish you the best of luck. This is a tough situation to see someone you love in. There may be no winning this one.

Her parents should have barred her from their house, too. Their behavior has been totally enabling.

I lost a cousin who came back from Viet Nam with a drug habit – which for all I know he may have had before he went there. But he had been coddled all his life until that point and was always taken back into his parents’ home after his return and several blown rehab attempts. I’m not sure if he died of a drug overdose or AIDS in the late 80s, but it was one or the other that killed him, finally. No one ever made him take responsibility for his own life.

@wundayatta : I speak from decades of experience. For 2 decades, I was a drunk manipulator who thought of nothing other than where my next drink was coming from. For the last 12 years, I’ve been cleaning up the wreckage of my past and helping others who want it.

You mentioned that she uses drugs to cover up some kind of pain. That’s blatantly wrong. Alcoholism and drug addiction are diseases recognized by the AMA. She uses drugs, because she’s an addict. It’s plain and simple.

The alternative course of action you are recommending is called enabling. It will end in nothing but heartache for all involved.

I didn’t address this in my answer above, but I will say it now. You, @john65pennington, don’t need to get involved with children’s services, but the grandparents do. In my opinion, they need to become the legal guardians of the children, until the mother can demonstrate that she can stay clean and keep a job to support herself and her children.

Being supportive and loving will lead this addict to one place and one place only: the grave. It killed one of my closest cousins. I’ve seen it too many times to count in only 12 years of sobriety. When you’re dealing with an alcoholic or an addict, you’re dealing with a whole different animal. You’re dealing with a disease.

John, I would ban her from my home as well. I also would talk to her other family members about concern for the children. If you don’t see a change made and still have concern for the children being in a safe condition I don’t see what choice you really have about calling social services.

@Hawaii_Jake You have direct experience with drinking. I don’t.

Why do drinkers and druggers start in the first place?

How is offering to take someone to treatment enabling? Are they supposed to get there purely on their own?

You have bipolar disorder. Did that have nothing to do with your drinking? Did you deal with one before the other or both at the same time? If one before the other, which did you deal with first?

Of course, I do have indirect experience. There are several members of my support group who are dealing both with drinking and bipolar. From what I can see, they are dealing with both at the same time, but as they get better with bipolar it is easier for them to get off of pot, cigarettes and booze. And none of us pressure them. In any case, they’re smart. They know the score.

I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all approach to alcoholism or other addictions. I think that comorbidities play an important role. Detox works in what—25% of cases (just a wild guess)? How much does AA work? Well, there’s a lot of controversy about that. Still, there are a lot of people for whom these treatments don’t work. Is it not within the realm of possibility that some other approach might have merit?

In fact, successful recovery seems to be dependent on a lot of support from family and friends according to this article, which is a review of the recovery research. This fits with my intuition. Or rather, my intution fits with the literature (look at page 118). The more support you have, the more likely you will have a positive outcome. It’s not “enabling.” It’s recovery.

@wundayatta , the enabling part is accepting unacceptable behavior. Allowing someone to stay in your home, knowing they will steal, and pretending they won’t is enabling. Taking them to treatment and supporting POSITIVE steps is not. Letting them come back in the house when they bail on treatment IS enabling. Supporting them and being there during treatment is not enabling. Covering for them so they don’t experience the consequences of their behavior IS enabling. Allowing them to wake up in their own puke and see what they did the night before is not enabling.
Does that make more sense?

@Judi Absolutely. I wasn’t advocating enabling at all, and I’m sorry if my words were misleading. If I may quote myself:

What I think should be done is a kind of behavioral thing. You refuse to enable bad behavior in the way you have: not letting her visit. You might even tell her why. Not sure about that, but I think that people need reality checks. Tell her you love her, but that you need to take care of yourselves.

At the same time, offer her help in taking care of herself. Offer to help her find meetings. Offer to take her to the doctor. Offer to help her understand how to get off drugs. Offer to help her get a job after she cleans up. Offer to get her therapy.

@wundayatta : You asked, “Why do drinkers and druggers start in the first place?” That is the million dollar question, and there is no single reason. Why some people drink normally their whole lives and others become alcoholics is not fully understood by science.

“How is offering to take someone to treatment enabling?” The OP states that the woman in question has been in and out of treatment. In my experience, those are signs that it’s not working and something else needs to be tried.

“Are they supposed to get there purely on their own?” Yes, actually. If the alcoholic/addict has to reach out for help on his/her own, they have a greater chance of maintaining complete abstinence.

You asked several question directed at me personally. I will not answer those here. They do not relate to the OP.

You are correct in saying there are many ways to treat alcoholism and drug addiction.

The article you linked us to (thank you) states close to the beginning that detox works in only about 12.5% of cases. I’ve saved the link to the article and hope to read the whole thing.

What I have written in this thread still stands. From the information in the OP, it is my opinion that time is running out for this woman.