Help- found ecstasy in dd’s room

[Potatopots]

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?

Not necessarily true @Greatorb. I always bought them 10 a go. It was very normal for me to have one or two left at the end of a night. Obviously I was both stupid and lucky, but having the drugs still on you doesn't mean you weren't also taking them.

Loads of people I know absolutely caned it back in the nineties and they seem fine now, in their normal lives.

Leah Betts was a sad but isolated case.

Keep calm, treat her as a grown up. The less of a deal as you make it, the less of a deal the drugs will be.

I am going to go against the heard here... I went to uni at 18. drugs were rife. Cocaine, weed, pills, Mkat, all the recreational ones. Everyone got high, did the whole party scene and still got their degrees and are all living totally ‘normal’ lives now. Not on the streets or injecting heroin. Please don’t automatically assume anyone who dabbles in the odd party drug is a ‘junkie’... it’s just a phase. Obviously speak to her about the dangers. Maybe ground her or some form of punishment, but for your sake OP don’t think this is something it isn’t.... genuinely I think 75% kids I know went through this phase.

kalinkafoxtrot there are 2 in the bag- how could I know there weren’t 5 or 20 originally?

Do lots of research and tell her you need a (nice, calm) chat. Tell her the dangers and side effects. Remind her what would happen if she got caught by the police in possession of them and how that might impact you as a family, just to give her something to think about. Then, with the understanding that she may still do it again with her friends and you can't lock her inside, tell her how to be safe if she must do it, explain to her about drug testing kits and lethal doses, and why pills are so dangerous because you never know what is actually in them

This.

@ewwsweatyunderboob
As soon as I posted it and read it back I did a 🙈 because I thought you might have meant the DD instead
Sorry!

A calm and adult conversation once she's woken up is probably best.

I definitely wouldn't go down the addiction, homelessness and death route - ecstasy isn't addictive anyway and she will likely just switch off.

Say it's her body and her choice but she needs to think very hard about whether this is something she wants to be involved in. If she must take them then then only take half and don't mix with alcohol or anything else.

I would make her aware of the immediate side effects like anxiety attacks and diarrhoea. Would also warn of the depression of comedowns and insomnia and how it takes much longer to recover from a comedown than a hangover . If she's studying for exams she'll find it harder to revise and she'll likely not do as well as she could. Does she want to jeopardise her future for a few fun nights out?

I would also warn of long term risks. My friends and I all took ecstasy in our teens and 20s. Out of about 15 of us pretty much all of us have lingering mental health issues, 2 have fibromyalgia and 2 have chronic fatigue syndrome. There's no proof it's down to the drugs but seems like a big coincidence if not.

If my mum has told me all this at 17 I'd have probably have completely ignored her but it's worth a try.

One thing my mum did say when she found out I took drugs was 'you're worth more than this and you can do more with your life than take drugs. Do something worthwhile instead' - that always stayed with me.

As pp have said it's very common amongst all backgrounds unfortunately and most of my friends are now professionals and I don't know anyone from the party scene that became addicted to anything. Some still do it and are in our 30's but most end up admitting it was just a youthful calling and they can now shut the door on that phase...

I plan to tell my dd if necessary about the very real and nasty exploitation that goes on to get the drugs to you just for your entertainment and maybe also the bit where they often get transported in peoples mouths and other bodily crevices even within the U.K., I don't understand why it's not more widely known In schools about that side of things, teenagers can be selfish and hearing that your drugs may have been transported up someone's backside would definitely put some off at least!

Not sure if that may have any effect on your dd?

Oh silly me - a smiley face or marijuana leaf on the pill will tell the OP it’s an ecstasy pill. - again OP, how do you know these are Ecstacy?

Most YP don’t call it that or know what “Ecstasy” is/was.

FFS, such a load of bollocks advice on this thread - and where is the OP?

I would take and bin the pills, l would wake her up, tell her you have a very important place to take her, and take her to have a chat with the locals who are homeless..If in London, Victoria station area is a good one to start.

I've heard it all now. OP, whatever you do, please ignore this advice. As if people sleeping rough don't have enough problems to deal with without middle class parents and their wayward offspring using them as some kind of cautionary tale. Would you be happy to be approached by a complete stranger in the street and asked to talk to them and their child about something very personal like your health, finances or something traumatic from your past? I doubt it. So why on earth would you assume that a homeless person wants to tell a complete stranger about their drug and alcohol problems? Unbelievable.

I used to work at a charity which had a young person’s drug service. What works in these situations?

• Keeping calm and talking to your daughter as an equal, as an adult - even though you know she isn’t yet
• Don’t go in with scare stories, stories about drug addiction. And JFC don’t take her to meet homeless people under a bridge, what a strange and patronising idea.
• Instead, focus on informing her about the health risks. There’s a really good organisation called the Loop which tests drugs at festivals. What they’ve found is that most drugs simply aren’t what they purport to be - made up of rat poison, washing powder, paracetamol. She simply can’t know what she’s taking when she takes drugs: www.theguardian.com/society/2018/dec/08/testing-drugs-festivals-lifesaver-study. She wouldn’t sit in your kitchen and eat rat poison, why on earth is she putting it in her mouth for a night out?
• Make it very clear that your concern isn’t that you think she will be a “druggie drop out”, it’s the real and present health benefits. That you would absolutely like her to stop and expect her to stop while she is under your roof, but this comes from place of love and concern.
• Finally, talk to her about safety. Most of the Ex/ MDMA deaths you will have heard about aren’t from the drugs themselves but associated risks, e.g. drinking too much water which the body can’t process and drowning oneself.
• Essentially you want to get to a point where you understand whether she’s feeling under any pressure from friends to act in a certain way, and role play with her how she can say no and still have fun if she wants. Red bull all night!

It’s totally normal to want to shout and scream and be angry. But you have two options - do you present yourself as someone who she can be open with and trust, or as a distant authoritarian who she thinks can’t understand her life? You want to be the person she can talk to so you can coach her to positive choices. That’s not to say you tacitly endorse these bad choices - it’s just better to be in the loop.

I hope there’s something useful here.

"Very few die from taking drugs"

Oh well, that's ok then.

iamnotagoddess I’m here! I don’t know for sure it’s ecstasy but it’s a pink pill in the shape of a Lego block with the Lego logo on it and on research that appears to be an ecstasy pill.

Cut off all her funds and show her all a good selection of news stories from this year about kids her age dying from taking ecstasy (cut with god knows what). Then go on to show her the absolute misery the drug dealers & suppliers she is supporting and giving money to inflict on society through violence & intimidation. The majority of the gang violence and stabbings that plague our cities at the moment comes from drug dealing. Buying recreational drugs while they are being supplied by such disgusting individuals is an incredibly selfish thing to do.

Can you post a picture of them OP?

Don't get hysterical about it. At some point most teens will experiment with drugs. I caned ecstasy in the early 90s, as did all of my friends, and I'm still here, a normal, boring, professional middle class woman who now worries about my own kids taking drugs. When she wakes up just ask her about it calmly and then talk about the dangers of drugs; mostly not knowing what it is that you are actually taking. There are horror stories about kids dying from taking ecstasy but there are also lots of teens that die from alcohol poisoning, choking on vomit whilst pissed, passing out and dying of hypothermia whilst pissed etc.
Nobody likes to think of their children taking drugs but it's pretty much inevitable that they will at some point.

I honestly can’t believe it’s widely accepted that most teens do pills. I’m not judging I’m just really shocked.

@YouJustDoYou
"Very few die from taking drugs"
Oh well, that's ok then.

THOUSANDS more die from alcohol. Is alcohol ok then?

BeamerTown's advice is very good.

thenamegames but usually those thousands are from long term use of alcohol, not from a single shot that wasn’t actually tequila but paint thinner

Sweaty Leah Betts is dead definitely the video had an impact on me, every single time I was offered drugs I thought of that.

Eye rolling and saying all teenagers do it isn't helpful, it normalises drug use.

To the poster who said "I hardly knew anyone that drank alcohol when doing ecstasy so it’s a rare case". Just because they didn't in your circle doesn't mean the other poster is wrong. I know adults who are still doing it but now have moved onto taking it with alcohol. And I know people who have died.

OP I know the posters who are saying stay calm are right, not sure I could though.

@Iamnotagoddess lol. Yes YP do...don’t be so naive. I know what an ecstasy pill looks like and I’m sure lots of other people on this thread do too. The quality / % of ecstasy actually in the pill obviously is unknown. But anything bought as a pill is assumed to be ecstasy - 99% of the time. All other recreational drugs come as powders.

As far as I remember, Leah Betts didn't die from drug use. She died from her own ignorance. In her anxiety to not be dehydrated after taking a pill she drank so much water that she poisoned her system and that's what killed her.

I would bin the pills you found and have a long and honest chat with my DC about the real dangers of drugs, so that the DC is at least not ignorant. There used to be a website called ?Talk to Frank which was very good. I don't know if it's still there. Knowledge is power.

I'd go in with questions.

Nothing but questions, to start with - she's not in trouble, but you want to understand. Where did they come from, what's the story, is it a regular thing, if so, why, does she feel safe doing it, how does she keep herself safe, etc etc.

The more she opens up, the more space you have to talk her through things without it being a 'lecture' and shutting her down.

And make sure she's aware of things like Fentanyl - it is TERRIFYINGLY lethal and showing up cut into all kinds of other things.

I’d talk to her about the supply chain; who makes them, where and what with.
I find it crazy that millennials and teenagers are massively into the environment, what they put into their bodies and fair trade, but are happy to take unknown, unregulated substances, in an industry based on fear, intimidation, addiction and often slavery.