My older sister has been addicted to narcotics for 6 years. She’s 31 and lives at home with my parents along with her 10-year-old daughter. Over the course of her addiction, she’s lied to everyone and stolen pills from my mom (who needs them for chronic pain) and grandmother (who was battling breast cancer at the time). My mom has hidden most of this from my step-father in order to protect my sister and their marriage is on the rocks because of it. She’s had to put deadbolts on her closet door and keep all of her medication in a locked safe in order to keep my sister from taking them. She even went through the closet at my house to find drugs, found pills my mom was keeping there, and overdosed at my bachelorette party. She’s been through detox more times than I can count, most of which were done at home with my mom taking care of her. She now claims to be clean, and yet she begs my mom for pills every single day. She’s manipulative and has no problems turning on the waterworks for sympathy from anyone willing to give it.
My mom is a completely different person than the person she used to be, and I believe my sister has a lot to do with it. She’s constantly anxious, depressed, paranoid, and high-strung. Her mental health status is very poor and it’s only a matter of time before she has a nervous breakdown. She’s a very hard person to be around and her relationship with my step-father is in horrible shape because he doesn’t know half of what has happened and what kind of stress she’s been through.
The only reason she hasn’t been kicked out is because of her daughter. My parents pretty much raised her and they’re scared to death that my sister will take her and put her in a harmful environment or, if something happens to her, her daughter will be forced to live with her dead-beat dad in another state who hasn’t seen her since she was a baby. This is awful, but I told my mom that if she offered my sister a baggie of pills if she signs over her parental rights to my mom, she’d do it. She claims to love my niece, but she loves pills more.
At this point, they’ve hit a dead end. My parents won’t kick my sister out because of her daughter and she won’t get sober while she’s being enabled. Selfishly, I’m glad I don’t live there anymore because I couldn’t handle that mess.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a parent giving up on their adult child with a drug addiction, especially after doing all they could for them. Sometimes they need to hit rock bottom before they can get clean. They’re adults – you gotta cut that cord eventually.