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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Help- found ecstasy in dd’s room

354 replies

Potatopots · 30/11/2019 08:49

At a loss on what to do. Dd went out last night and took my house key with her (she lost hers)- I’m heading out now and couldn’t find my key on the hook so checked her jacket pocket and found my key as well as a baggie containing 2 ecstasy pills. She’s still asleep but what do I do? Wake her up and confront her? Wait until she’s woken up and ask her about them? Leave them on her bedside table for her to see when she wakes up and see what she does before I ask her?

OP posts:
TriangularRatbag · 30/11/2019 17:07

[MDMA/ecstasy is] a drug that could easily be regulated, tested and sold responsibly. In its pure form it doesn’t pose a physical risk. In fact it’s been proposed as being used legally to help depression.

If you are well-informed it's easy enough to buy pure MDMA in small quantities directly from a lab (illegally of course). It's extremely safe, compared to most recreational experiences. The irony of our drugs policy is that it makes this much harder and makes it more likely that young adults will take dangerous adulterated pills instead.

TheoneandObi · 30/11/2019 17:18

So many people here so cool about drugs. Wow. I’ll get shot down here as a naive idiot for saying this too, but while it may be common for teens to experiment, that doesn’t make it the norm. Or right. It really doesn’t. We know enough young people who’ve had to take enforced gap years or dropped out of college or uni because of drug related mental health problems to know that it’s a stupid thing to do. Communicating it is the problem. Bit doing nothing an just saying airily ‘well I was ok’ really isn’t giid enough.
That said, I wouldn’t advocate an all guns blazing approach. For a start she may have been given the pills yeah yeah cool I’ll take them, and have zero intention of doing so. It really is possible.

StarClaws · 30/11/2019 17:35

Bit doing nothing an just saying airily ‘well I was ok’ really isn’t giid enough

Yeah that's probably why nobody has said that on this thread.

Evilspiritgin · 30/11/2019 17:44

I never did ecstasy as a teenager, we had Leah Betts plus we also had Rachel Whitear, I still can’t believe some posters line of thinking.

Before and after photos

I apologise if any of Rachel’s family are on here

Chlosavxox · 30/11/2019 17:52

Have people not been seeing the numerous teenagers in the news recently who are dying from taking pills? Pills are DANGEROUS, as are any other drug.

TriangularRatbag · 30/11/2019 17:55

Awful photo @Evilspiritgin

TheoneandObi · 30/11/2019 18:05

Star claws I’m paraphrasing and you know it. There are dozens of comments about happy pills and how posters don’t know anyone who came to any harm. Well I’m 53 with kids who’ve just come through the danger years with drugs. And As I said there are plenty of casualties. Not deaths I admit.
But stuff that has thrown lives off course.

TriangularRatbag · 30/11/2019 18:14

There are dozens of comments about happy pills and how posters don’t know anyone who came to any harm.

Anecdotal reports on either side are pretty much useless. On the thread there are also reports (and photos) of death. There are much more rational ways of judging the risk than basing it on the fact that a stranger on the internet had a friend who took some drugs once, and she was ok.

Branleuse · 30/11/2019 18:14

You dont inject ecstacy? What on earth has a picture of a poor girl who died from injecting heroin got to do with taking an E?

TriangularRatbag · 30/11/2019 18:19

What on earth has a picture of a poor girl who died from injecting heroin got to do with taking an E?

I think when people start taking the death-and-ruination approach, they see it as some sort of trump card meaning all rationality has to be suspended.

AFairlyHardAvocado · 30/11/2019 18:20

1 girl who was raped at a party because she was under the influence of drugs.

What a fucking disgusting thing to say. She was raped at a party because a rapist at the party raped her. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Timinfuckingruislip · 30/11/2019 18:34

@TheoneandObi I don’t think anyone bar one poster has said “oh it’s ok don’t worry about it”. But what people are saying is that going in hard with a 17 year old is not ready the way forward.

A perfect example is the heroin addict post above. The likelihood of someone who’s started taking recreational drugs fairly recently turning into a heroin addict is bloody slim and if he op went down the route of showing her that image - it’s not really going to speak to her.

Notheardback · 30/11/2019 18:34

17 is young but a lot of kids are doing it. I would speak to her about it and warn her about the dangers . Unfortunately her friends are probably all doing it .MDMA per se is not dangerous in a small amount .But , drugs these days are mixed with all sorts , scary really . Also it is illegal , I would warn her about that .

Yetanotherwinter · 30/11/2019 18:39

@Bezalelle it’s a huge sweeping statement to assume that all homeless people are drug users. Clearly there will be a proportion that are. But there are also many drug users holding regular jobs, with families and mortgages. In fact it’s frightening how many ‘regular’ people actually use drugs particularly cocaine and ecstasy. You would be far wiser to have a professional explain the health risks.

NewName73 · 30/11/2019 18:40

I apologise for the comment about the girl being raped at the party - I wasn't thinking when I wrote this.

Of course it was not her fault and I should have said it happened when she was incapacitated due to having taken some drugs, but that was obviously not the reason it happened.

Also my language was not very precise in my other post. DS knows that people can die from taking drugs, because of his personal experience, that does not mean they will die.

I'll go back to my English GCSE studies now ...

Meggie2008 · 30/11/2019 18:43

I cannot believe the amount of people on this thread that think it's no big deal.
My mother would have murdered me if I'd done anything like that, she still would.
It's pretty much constant in the papers and news about dodgy tablets, it's not worth the risk at all.

TheoneandObi · 30/11/2019 18:43

Maybe a lot are doing it. But not all. Maybe not even the majority. I guess that depends on in disposable income and where the kids live and many other factors.
My DS has epilepsy, has done since he was a child, and his last big attack was at age of 19. On admission at hospital we had a barrage of questions about drug taking. It was assumed that a 19 yo who’d had a grand mal had been taking substances I’d some description. The assumption continued right up until the follow ups with his neurologist. Now you may think I’m naive but the boy had had seizures off and on since he was 2, and the day of that last one (which led to a successful change of meds) he’d been with me all day, preparing and packing for his gap year adventure.
My point is there are a lot of kids out there who are succumbing to neurological events bc of drugs. Time and time again that’s what docs told us. I shudder. It’s not a condition I’d wish on anyone, and for it to be self inflicted through drug use, well....

PeterRouseTheFleshofMankind · 30/11/2019 18:55

I'm another one who would be absolutely devastated if I found illegal drugs on my kids, can't believe that some people think this is no big deal.

YouJustDoYou · 30/11/2019 18:55

My step dad, when I was 14, told me matter of factly, about his two friends who died from drug use when he was a teenager. One tried to peel off her own face. The other jumped off the top of a tourism open top bus, because as she said in hospital "I thought I could fly". She later died, as did the first one who destroyed her face after smashing her head into a mirror. That, as a 14 year old, put me off drugs for life. My uncle was killed by a drug driver, who was on the wrong side of the road. My BIL smoked drugs heavily, and was a frightengly angry paranoid man until he gave it up. Those on here who are normalizing it, saying it's fine, saying it's nothing - Jesus. Anything, drugs, alcohol etc, that affect a human so immediately and starkingly, isn't some great thing we should all just accept as something that our children experiment with. It's drugs. She's a 17 year old child doing something not only illegal but that will land her in prison if caught, dead at worse. How can you all not care about that?

StarClaws · 30/11/2019 19:04

She's a 17 year old child doing something not only illegal but that will land her in prison if caught

You don't get put in prison for possession of two ecstacy pills.

How can you all not care about that?

Again, only one single person has said they wouldn't care. Mostly it's people being realistic about how great of a risk it is and reacting accordingly.

ActualHornist · 30/11/2019 19:38

I think rather than saying they 'don't care', most people are giving reasoned responses based on their own experiences and understanding of teens. I know I have.

Of course I would be upset if I found drugs on my kids Confused I just recognise, from my own past actions, that going scorched earth doesn't work.

Evilspiritgin · 30/11/2019 19:40

@Branleuse

She started off at the age of 14 doing recreational drugs and progressed

I’m sorry some of you don’t think that kids dying of drugs is anything to bother about ( no matter the drug), the amount dying is going up every year

TheBouquets · 30/11/2019 19:47

Drug taking is dangerous.
Street drugs are not regulated in any way and are often mixed with the strangest things.
People die of taking street drugs. Dying is one thing, the heartbreak of the family members of the drug taker's family is quite another.

Fizzypoo · 30/11/2019 19:58

It's all personal anecdote on here. I previously linked to the actual harm of drugs chart for peer reviewed data.

And, as I'm quite sure all the 'not bothered' comments are directed at me - I didn't say that. I do not want my 14 yr old dd to start getting off her head on E. However, if she did when she was older, I would make sure she knew how to do it as safely as possible and if that was the only drug she was using I wouldn't be overly concerned. This is because I would understand it was a phase as my dd does not have emotional issues in her life due to trauma and/or neglect. I understand the difference between using drugs to escape and numb emotional pain and using drugs to have fun for a short time in her life.

I would be more concerned with dd binge drinking every weekend rather than occasionally ecstasy use. I'd rather my dd had harm reduction information rather than the abstain message.

notfun · 30/11/2019 19:58

I used to take loads of Es and other party drugs during my teens (ex raver)

Loved it, couldn't get enough until I grew up a bit and responsibilities and work took over.

My DC and their friends started doing the same, I didn't know but some of the parents did and thought it was just kids being kids.

One night, one of the friends died. Watching that person die with blood running out of their eyes and ears must have been as horrific as it sounds to me typing it.

None of them have done drugs since and although it's a tiny percentage who actually die, I don't think that person's parents find it irrelevant as a statistic.

Please show your DD the newspapers articles from the past couple of years. They are all there if you search.

It shocked the entire community.