Pendlwitch, how is your son doing?
We have just discovered our 16 year old daughter is using Xanax heavily, mainly at weekends - she's also smoking weed regularly. We're devastated - knew it was in her social group but thought she was one of the sensible ones! Unfortunately the main supplier is someone she's been absolutely besotted with for a long time with no sign of this changing.
Other members of her social group had started getting very worried about her and one talked to her Mum who thankfully contacted me. We talked to her about it - she was relatively open about using but denied taking in the quantities her friend had said. We went to the GP who spoke to her in confidence and then simply reassured us there was not an addiction problem.
She obviously didn't tell him how much she was using or how regularly and now GP has said he doesn't think there's an addiction problem she seems to think it's ok to still use. I know she's still planning to continue taking as I saw one of her messages today to the boy who supplies.
She has started stealing money and her friends are dropping her as she's trying to blag money from them. They are also obviously fed up with her behaviour changes and concerned about her risky behaviour.
She's agreeing to go to counselling as she recognises there's an underlying problem - anxiety and possibly depression - and I've managed to find a counsellor locally so sessions can start relatively quickly.
We're out of our depth dealing with this - trying to be calm, make sure she has facts and have tried to talk about how things have changed (withdrawing from family, stopping all activities she enjoyed - piano, guitar etc.., looking wasted, poor concentration and starting to struggle with school work, bruised legs from falling over) but it's absolutely terrifying. Everything I've read says it's so easy to overdose, go into heart failure, choke on vomit in the short term and slide into full addiction very quickly.
Any help or advice would be really appreciated