Daughter taking drugs

[NoRiffRaff]

My nearly 16 yo daughter has recently had a shift in friendships and started hanging out with two other girls rather than her lovely well established friendship group. I have just heard via her old best friend’s Mum that my DD is regularly taking class A drugs, smoking weed and vaping. I am shocked and devastated. I thought I knew her so well. One of her friends has recently been caught with drugs in school and I naively believed my DD when she minimised it and said it was a one off. Basically my lovely DD is part of the school druggie crowd. WTF do I do about this? I want to come down on her like a tonne of bricks.
Her Dad and I are divorced but will speak to her together about this. Please help!

Lots of education around drugs. Knowledge is power. Knowledge about real and long term health dangers, knowledge of the law, knowledge of how to say no, knowledge of county lines dangers.

Weekly counselling. Help her reflect on her own issues which might be causing her to get sucked into drugs/bad crowd.

talk to the school and ask the pastoral team to do some work with her. A visit from police to talk through realities of being caught with drugs/dealing/dangerous druged behaviours.

Get her proper fee paid careers advice so she can work out a future and the qualifications or routes to specific jobs.

help her find a part time job which will build her confidence and responsibility

mentoring schemes. Role models.

Voluntary work in something that she is super interested in.

Thank you Hearti that’s really helpful.
She has just finished her GCSEs and has been working so hard towards them. I can’t get my head around this.

She already has a part time job which I think is part of the problem, as she has plenty of money. I’m considering making her get her wages paid into my account, so I can save her money for her and pay her a small allowance from it.

I want to stop her from seeing those two friends altogether. I also want to insist that I can track her whereabouts from an app, so I always know where she is.

Are these good ideas? She is normally open with me but will have no problem lying to my face about this.

Your daughter sounds like me 5 years ago I was the exact same I'm 20 now and I felt like I had to do drugs and and all that stuff just to be able to fit into the wrong crowd them new "friends" who are feeding her drugs or whatever aren't really her friends my mum would always worry sick that she'd get a knock at the door from the police telling her they've found me dead somewhere because I've took the wrong drug it only takes that one time sorry to say but that is the harsh reality of it all drugs are dangerous and I'd put a stop to it as soon as you can there awful I would come home and not be able to eat the next day even a few days after I've been there if I could go back I wish I never did any of it it wasn't worth it and I'm not mates with any of the people I used to do drugs with back then and it just shows!

Thank you, I have noticed that she’s eating less and has lost weight. She’s very skinny now. What do you think your parents could have/should have done to get you to stop?

Bump

She's 16? You can't take her pay ffs.

Charging board is one thing, but you can't just take her pay because you don't like how she spends it.

Also a dabble in drugs does not a downfall make. Plenty of very professional people I know did a dabble, and came out the other side.

Imo, going in too hard will push it more secretive and make it more attractive.

Educate yourself first, maybe use some of services for parents.

I’m not taking her pay. I’m saving it for her, she was saving for a car before all this happened.

Nor am I uneducated about drugs. I’m not talking about a bit of weed, it’s ketamine several times a week.

Hi lovely, I totally can empathise with you. I posted on here a few days ago about my son taking drugs but had no replies. My son is only 14 and has taken MDMA, ket and acid. I'm beyond devastated and haven't been getting much sleep! The pull of wanting to fit in with the "cool kids" is too much. I have a tracking app (life360), he does not have a part time job which I'm actually quite grateful for as he doesn't have money for stupid things. When he does go out with his friends, I check on him every couple of hours (I will literally drive to wherever he is), I ask for full names of kids he's hanging out with and look them and their parents up on social media. I'm a stalker parent apparently 🙈. But I keep saying to him that only he can make me back off by proving to me that he's not doing anything stupid. I don't really have much advice, I can just tell you what I'm doing and offer a virtual hug and an open inbox whenever you want.
I've tried to have open conversations with him, explaining that I'm protecting myself as well as him and above all else I just want him to be happy and healthy. Like you said earlier, it's not just a bit of weed, I never thought I'd see the day where I would actually be relieved if he was just smoking a bit of weed! I've never touched drugs in my life.
I feel like I've tried everything on the planet in terms of parenting and I'm just waiting for it to work and he comes through it... or for it not to work and my world collapses.
Message me any time xxx

Auralayla thank you so much. I have taken the day off work and her Dad and I have had a very frank conversation with her. It turns out that she has done ket (many times), pills, nitrous oxide, plus regular weed and vaping.
I’m gutted that I saw no signs of this.
There were lots of tears and denials and promises that she’ll never touch ket again but I can’t trust a word she says. I’ve got her on the life 360 app now and there will be no sleepovers until I feel I can trust her. I think she’ll tow the line because I’ve told her my next step will be to speak to her friends’ parents, the school and police.
We’ll see. I know that dabbling with drugs is a rite of passage but regular ketamine use at 15 is terrifying. Best wishes to you and your son. I hope he comes out the other side of this soon x

regular ketamine use is not as safe as she likely thinks it is. educate her on ketamine & what it is doing to her bladder over regular long term use

First of all, try to be kind and understanding with her, she will be so grateful for this. You may have been already, this isn't criticism, just what I'd do.

It sounds as if she knows it wasn't the right thing to do so if you say look, we all make mistakes, it's ok, let's work it out she will probably be pleased. Sorry, but I don't think tracking her and constantly going on at her will help or make any difference other than she'll potentially lie more. Teenagers are often liars IME.

Ket is a vile drug and so educating her about it is probably the best way. Vapes and weed aren't ideal but IMO are less of a worry than the ket.

Most teenagers I know have tried stuff like this and a lot of them just grow out of it and stop doing it. Good luck and try to keep her busy and distracted and maybe also talk to her about the eating. An ED is as much as a worry as drugs but I'm sure you know that.

I wouldn't stop her seeing the friends tbh. But I would have rules around what time she comes in and where she goes but I'd say that about any 16 yo tbh.

@NoRiffRaff How are things? Just found out my dd is doing cannabis and I'm also gutted and unsure how to go forward.i know it's not on the same level as K, but the emotions are similar.

The urologist I know has had to remove bladders from people who do ketamine, tell her a bag for her Wee outside her body is not a good look!

Tell her about ketamine bladder, so many teenagers come through the NHS that are now incontinent due to ketamine use.

Sorry, I have only just seen these updates.
HowdoIRespond I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. If it helps, I don’t think weed is necessarily a gateway to stronger stuff.
I ended up buying some drugs testing kits off Amazon. I haven’t used them yet but she knows I have them and I’ve told her to expect random drugs tests at any point I feel like it. I think that has scared her off taking anything for now. She’s just started 6th form and is making new friends so I’m hoping she’ll have other things on her mind now. I’ll still be watching her like a hawk though.
Ketamine bladder sounds awful, I’ll make sure she knows about that, thank you.

Sorry to hear this and pleased you have turned things around. But you say the op needs to put a stop to it soon. But how? My daughter takes class A drugs S a way of self medicating trauma but I cannot stop her - she will not listen to me. Any tips on how to keep her close despite the fact you know she could easily kill herself . Everything I say seems to be wrong

You can't force her to pay her wages into your bank account. You can't refuse to give her her wages because you want to save them for her. That's financial abuse. She has the right to spend her money however she likes. She has the right to make decisions, even stupid ones.

Charge her board and lodgings if you want, then save it to give it back to her at a later date if that what you want to do with it. If it's more than a nominal amount, don't be surprised if she then quits education for a full time job and moves out, or just moves out into some older scummy druggie friend's place rent free. If she's spending most of her wages on drugs she isn't going to be happy with you acquiring her wages, however you go about it.

I don't agree with what she's doing, but she has rights and you have to respect that. Occupying her time is a good idea. Every moment she's not with these new friends is a good thing. You must be worried sick.

So I didn’t take any money of her. That was an idea I had as a knee jerk reaction to finding out. I had a really serious chat with her and told her I was terrified of getting a knock at the door one day to say she’d been found dead somewhere and that I would report her to the police for Class A drug use if I thought that would prevent that from happening. I’ve made her download a location tracking app so I know where she is at all times and I’ve told her that if she fails a drugs test then I’ll seek advice from the police even if that means she gets a criminal record. I know this is unlikely but it’s scared her. She’s not allowed to stay overnight unless it’s with friends whose parents I know and I think/hope that this she isn’t taking anything now but I will be watching her like a hawk until I can trust her again.

Hi op. Im in my 40s and when I was teenager my friends and I were heavily into drugs as part of the rave /dance music scene

Im not saying not to worry and of course do keep engaging with her. But I want to reassure you thst plenty of professional adults will have had wild drug taking years and come through it to be sensible grown ups!

Those druggie mates of mine are now lawyers. Gps ....gardeners...any sensible job you can think of!

Teenagers are primed by evolution to take risks and humans have experimented with mind altering substances since the dawn of time

Try to show that you understand drugs can be fun..interesting etc. Its just counter productive if you cant acknowledge that

Thanks waterrat. I’ve taken drugs on occasions too when I was younger, as have many of my friends and we all turned out ok too. But I also know of people who have died after taking ket and I don’t want my daughter to be taking any chances with that stuff at all. It feels different when it’s your own children, your desire to protect them overrides everything, but it’s reassuring to hear a more balanced viewpoint too.