Daughter on drugs

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Hello all - a Dad here. Looking for help and advice regarding my 16 year old daughter, who is involved in the drug scene. Sorry, it's a very complicated situation, I will try and explain as succinctly as possibly.

Essentially my daughter is a very troubled young woman. She has been struggling to cope with life for some time now. She has been cutting herself for around 4 years, that I know of, and has made several suicide attempts by taking overdoses of pills, which have all, fortunately, failed, but she still threatens this type of thing on a regular basis, and she experiences large mood swings, anxiety, and depression.

I have been trying to get mental health support for her for a long time. She finally attracted the attention of CAMHS after her suicide attempts, having been on their waiting list for a long time, and she has been seeing them for about 2 years now. However, aside from prescribing her Fluoxetine, which has helped her a little bit, their talk therapy sessions have largely fallen on deaf ears. My daughter is very stubborn, and will not listen to anyone, including me, if their opinion is different to her own. So the therapists have made very little progress in helping her, or getting her to look at things differently, and her situation and attitude has not noticeably changed. And at points she has refused to talk to CAMHS too, because she doesn't want to hear anything from anyone that she doesn't agree with- it triggers her, and causes her to want to do extreme things to herself. I don't think she is talking to anyone at CAMHS at the moment, because of her decision to stop talking to them late last year, and I think she is now back on a waiting list to talk to a different CAMHS therapist, because she didn't like the original one they assigned to her. It is unclear whether things will be any better with a different therapist. Somehow I doubt it.

Her life has taken another turn for the worse recently. She was in Sixth Form until February, but she quit, in a rather dramatic fashion, by leaving a suicide note for her teachers. She cannot cope well with stress, and Sixth Form proved too much for her. So she is just living with her Mum now, and doing very little otherwise. There are some tentative plans for her to try Sixth Form again in September, at a less demanding college, but it is unclear whether she will be well enough to do that, or will cope any better next time around with the stress.

At around the same time as she quit Sixth Form, I discovered that she was involved in the drug scene. She first told me stories of her friends who were heavily into drugs, but initially denied being involved with drugs herself. She portrayed herself as the person that was helping her friends get off drugs. Before long, though, she started posting pictures on her social media of herself doing drugs with her friends, and her own drug use has become more widely recognised amongst friends and family. Her older sister, for example, has listed to me a whole cocktail of drugs that she is aware that her younger sister has taken.

I have tried hard to get support for my daughter - for example, I have informed Children's Services and CAMHS of everything that has been happening in her life - the suicide threats, the quitting Sixth Form, the drug use, etc. But there is a general reluctance to get involved. In our region, Children's Services is split into two divisions - 'Early Help' for less serious cases, and Social Care for the more serious cases. Early Help have been sympathetic to her problems, but they have a hard rule that they cannot operate at all without the young person's consent. My daughter won't give her consent, because whenever she is asked, she denies that she is on drugs at all, even though she has posted pictures of herself doing them on social media! Social care essentially don't care, because my daughter is hurting herself - they only seem interested if a young person is being harmed by their parents. They think it is CAMHS's responsibility to sort the situation out anyway, and claim that they too have no framework to operate without my daughter's consent, as she is 16 now.

I spoke to the charity 'Young Minds' about the situation just over a month ago, and they think there is a failure of services like CAMHS and Children's Services to work together to protect my daughter. They also suggested that my daughter's ability to consent or withdraw consent from services should be examined, given how unwell she is. However nobody seems to acknowledge or recognise this viewpoint around here, and essentially very little is happening to support my daughter, apart from me complaining regularly to Services that nobody is doing anything useful. And my daughter has withdrawn consent for me to speak to them anyway, so there is very little they can tell me, even if they wanted to.

As another complication, my older daughter, who is currently away at university, has recently been assessed there as having ADHD, and is receiving concessions on that basis. It seems highly possible that my 16 year old may also be neurodiverse, and that this may be contributing to her issues in life. I've mentioned this possibility to Children's Services/CAMHS, but once again, nobody is doing anything to progress that, for example by scheduling an assessment for her.

Any advice about how to get effective help for my daughter would be appreciated - it just seems like a series of brick walls at the moment,

What's her mum's thoughts on what happening? Is there anyone else she might open up to, a grandmother, cousin or aunt or her sister?

What drugs is she taking?

It’s really hard because ultimately there is no magic cure here.

For what it’s worth I was that 16 year old when I was younger (drugs, self harm, suicidal, awful MH) - but it was very primarily related to my awful home life and the anxiety and distress it gave me on a daily basis. The route to recovery for me was leaving home at 18 and never returning.

Has she had any hardships in her life outside of the ordinary? Was her suicide attempt a serious attempt, aka without intervention would she have died? A lot of attempts aren’t proper attempts but a cry for help, generally if they really want to die they will. I know it sounds trite but ‘off the rails’ teenagers are very common and despite all our talk about MH now etc a lot of teenagers are simply very rebellious, hormonal and caught up in their feelings. It looks like a MH episode but actually it’s a stage.

It's difficult to say because 'the drug scene' could mean she smokes cannabis occasionally or it could mean she's trafficking class As and has a massive crack and fentanyl habit.

I know that someone needs to admit to being an addict within themselves, not because someone else says they are. Else they can't be helped.

Mum is aware (obviously) of the situation. But as far as I can see, she is deliberately turning a blind eye to things. She has said that as long as our daughter doesn't do drugs in her house, she's not really that bothered...

She's a recent convert to 'Gentle Parenting', so she doesn't exercise much in the way of boundaries. This is one of the attractions of living with Mum, in that Mum doesn't really want to get help for our daughter's drug habit, whereas I do. Our daughter tends to lose her rag and become unstable, or even aggressive if anyone tries to take away her autonomy or choices.

In terms of which drugs, there's been a selection, apparently: Cannabis, Vapes, Magic Mushrooms, Xanax, Ketamine, Nitrous Oxide and MDMA

Her life certainly hasn't been easy. Difficult divorce between her parents. Troubled and volatile relationships with her siblings. Children's Services stampeding through their lives when they were younger. All of the children are very sensitive at the best of times, and they don't take kindly to being told 'no', or having boundaries applied. Possibly the children are all neurodivergent and not very resilient.

You may be right that they weren't 'serious' suicide attempts, but cries for help. But unfortunately, when help comes, she doesn't seem ready to accept it. She doesn't really want to listen to anyone's view , whoever they are, apart from her own. She is sure she is the victim of every set of circumstances, whatever anyone did to try and help her at the time. So she doesn't want to listen to any therapist that tries to argue that others might have had a different perspective, so she rejects them. So things never change.

Why children’s services involvement?

Have listed them, but Mumsnet has (hopefully temporarily!) censored me. The post may pop up as and when they review it.

Mum was/is very emotionally unstable, and made a suicide attempt in front of the children, a decade ago, which prompted our divorce. The children were put into Child Protection for a while because of that, but they were released when the Family Court gave custody to me.

Not a solution at such but are you aware of who she's mainly getting her drugs from? Are they a nice person?

I really doubt that they are ‘a very nice person’
Sadly.

Some of the drugs she has got from dealers on the 'dark web'. She explained to me once how easy it is to access- there are phone apps that allow you to order drugs like Amazon...🙄

I think your best bet is stability and getting involved yourself. The model she has had, with difficulties between you two, as you say an emotionally unstable mum and a suicide attempt in front of the children has been chaotic, and she is now mirroring that. Hour best bet is stability and love. If I'd had just one adult who listened, who didn't say anything, who listened to my ill formed viewpoints, that I could have talked to, who would just nod yes and be there, things would have been different. If all else fails, listen to her, validate her, show her that you like her and be emotionally stable for her.

She did have her older sister as a confidante at one point. But relations between them are currently very strained, and they are not speaking. All the siblings are volatile, say hurtful and thoughtless things, and are emotionally reactive, which means that they often go for periods where they won't speak to each other, or help each other out.

Being ND may well be why she hasn’t been able to engage with camhs. May be worth pushing for a) assessment (if she is willing) and b) a more neuro affirming approach. Camhs therapy is not designed for the ND brain. Hope you manage to get some help soon.

I have tried to be there for her over the years, but she sometimes she makes it very difficult.

For example, about a year ago, before all this drug stuff came out, she was being targeted at school by other girls who were also part of the drugs scene, who thought my daughter had 'snitched' on them and got them into trouble. I didn't understand any of this was going on - she kept it all secret from me at the time. Then she started refusing to go to school, right before her GCSE exams. Out of desperation, because I didn't want her to flunk all her exams, I confiscated her mobile phone, and said she'd get it back when she went to school and started revising. All hell then broke loose, and she physically attacked me to try and get the phone back. I didn't do retaliate at all - just tried to get away from her, and get out of the house. But the whole thing ended with her reporting me to the Police, even though she was the one that attacked me! She still genuinely thinks I'm the one at fault in that situation, and she hasn't spent much time with me since then.

It's a risk for me to even spend time with her, because if I say or do something that she doesn't like, she may well lose the plot and accuse me of being 'abusive' to her, and threaten to report me to the authorities. She needs help, but as you can see , it is difficult getting her any.

Yes, I think it is very relevant.

The problem is, in our region, CAMHS don't do the neurodivergent assessments, some other part of the NHS does. And even nudging her to fill in the forms and kick the process off is proving hard enough...

I have personal experience with CAHMS with a family member. The reason she might not be willing to talk to a CAHMS therapist is that most teenangers believe and it is somewhat true is that they will have no confidentiality and whatever they will tell the therapist will come back to parents.

Ask her if she is willing to try a private therapist who would be willing to sign a confidentiality agreement with her and won't pass on anything to you.

You can also ask the psychiatrist to increase the dosage of fluoxetine for her if it is not helping or change it to a different medication. Fluoxetine does take 5-6 weeks to settle and show positive effects. Fluoxetine also has a black box warning for under 25 so if her issues have increased after fluoxetine then a change might do her good.

Some of the drugs she is taking can cause serotonin syndrome and can cause medical emergencies. Her psychiatrist should atleast make her risk aware.

If she has left the sixth form because of stress then it's fine. Maybe she is trying to get away from toxic people. Apart from the drugs, just support her and listen to her.

It's so difficult and unfortunately the supports just aren't there.
Do try to make sure you have support for yourself, therapy for yourself or a local parent support group etc. It is not easy.
Good luck, I hope it all works out

Can you afford to get your child to a psychiatrist?

In your shoes, that's what I would do, even if it meant borrowing money on my house.

We've tried going the private route before. But apparently she literally just sat there, and refused to speak to the therapist for the whole session. The main problem is engagement, not money - if she doesn't respect or believe in the person talking to her, she will just clam up and refuse to cooperate. She only tends to accept other people who agree with everything she thinks and says. The therapist wanted to understand why she was sometimes violent to her family, and took the attitude that violence is wrong (which it obviously is). But she tends to see all of her actions as justified - even the violent ones. So she always sees herself as victim, regardless of circumstances.

Thanks Corcra - your kind thoughts are appreciated

There are other therapists...

I was suggesting a psychiatrist though.