I was talking to one of my very old friends the other day...catching up and reminiscing about the old days, when he started talking to me about one of our mutual friends.
He started to look very concerned, and said he needed to tell me something, but he didn't know how to say it and he didn't want me to freak out. I started to feel that knot in your stomach that you feel when someone is about to tell you something terrible, and you don't want to know about it....but you do at the same time.
He told me that our friend, who we will just call Tom, had started to get pretty heavily into drugs. He had always been kind of a pothead, but he explained that he is now doing coke and taking pain killers on a daily basis, and mixes in various different drugs when the opportunity presents itself. He is living with his girlfriend who is also a drug addict, and both of them have now reached the point that they will do basically anything to get their fix.
As my friend was explaining the situation, he told me that Tom had recently stolen his credit card and taken out well over three thousand dollars of his personal funds. Not only that, but had lied to him about various things that he was just starting to find out. My friend was very hurt by this, and upset that Tom would do this to him. They have since ended communication and no longer see each other.
It dawned on me throughout this conversation how serious this situation was. They had contacted Tom's parents, who recently came to get him and take him to rehab, but he returned back after only a couple of days. They didn't make him go to rehab. Instead they drove him back to his girlfriend. They knew all about Tom's situation.....so why didn't they do more? Why didn't they make him go to rehab? Why didn't they try harder to get him to go?
He was one of my friends from growing up, but we haven't really spoken in a while. Is it my place to even try to talk to him about this issue? Or do I just wait and hope for the best?
healthkicker.comThis is a submitted guest blog
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Comments (10)
i would say something.... but you can't beat yourself up about it if things don't get better right away. he has to learn for himself unfortunately until he gets caught or OD's he's not going to stop... especially because his girlfriend does the drugs with him too. depending on his age his parents might not have been able to force him into rehab, once youre 18 you have to sign yourself in.
you cud try but @the same time you need keep yer distance ie protekt yerself frum being too drawn in to hiz addiktshun
Unfortunantly its so much more complicated than you could ever imagine.
Everyone's situations are different, but, addiction is the same no matter who you are.
I am so sorry to hear about your friend, it hurts me to hear this kind of story, because I have been there.
I am sorry to say that there is not a lot you can do. He is the only person who can get himself clean. You have to let him reach his bottom on his own. You should be thankful that he has now been exposed to rehab, because now he knows that there is another way to live! If he chooses not to fallow that way, that is own him, not you, or his family, no one bust him. And you should be grateful that someone has made the effort to show him!
I have been to rehab multipul times. I have relapsed over and over, but I have found a new way to live through Narcotics Anonymous! The best you could do it show him to a meeting. Addiction is so so hard. I know where your friend is, and I know where your coming from too, because before I started using, I had concern for my friends who had gotten into drugs.
I don't know, I fee like this comment makes no sense and it all over the place. but I guess my point is, there is nothing you can do, and people do care, thats why they helped him get to rehab, and if they didn't care they wouldn't have taken him anywhere, so the fact that they even drove him to the girlfriends shows that they do care and love him and at least wanted him to have a safe way there. do you understand? Idk. NA is the way to go :)
people will do as they please.
and people love to learn the hard way. it's in our nature.
there isn't much anyone can do for an addict. the addict has to want to help themselves to get help.
i know from experience, there is nothing you can say to a person about their habits that will make them change.
they have to see it themselves.
That's the way it is. that's the way it's been
That's the way it will always be. with everything.
=\
and that's the damn truth
I'd talk to him. It might be difficult, but it might be what he needs and perhaps the truth will dawn on him.
I am in class so I can't type the best message.
Basically what I would type will boil down to that your friend won't change until he is ready to change. He wo't let go of his addiction until he is tired of it and does not need it for whatever reason he needs it. The psychological reasons for addiction are harder to deal with than the physical reasons for addiction.
you can support him, but you can't force him to change. the reason his family and freidns seem like they are doing nothing may be that they've done what they can do and are simply no longer enabling him.
Unfortunately, you can't MAKE people want to change. I doubt that his family just doesn't care. But that is a tough situation to be in!!
yeah. you should tell someone
As others have said, people have to want to change on their own. If someone is forced/coerced into going into rehab or getting clean, it's typically not going to "stick." The reason for this is because the person may be in rehab, going through the motions, acting as if getting clean is important to them but in reality they're not really *hearing* anything that's being said to them and they're just waiting til they are able to leave and get back out there in one way or another.
The best you can do is to hope that he will recognize that he's going down the wrong path before it is too late; before he OD's, or his girlfriend does, or he faces jail time for having hard drugs in his possession. I know it is hard, and you can try to talk to him, but ultimately an addict will do what they think is right and the more you try to stop them, the more compelled they will feel to continue. It's like trying to stop a stubborn child, and it's not worth it to stress yourself out in such a way.
I used drugs recreationally in college but I was careful to steer clear of the type that are physically addictive. I had some fun, then met my husband, and moved on to the next stage of my life without (too many) regrets. I didn't continue to party like I had in college and when I tried, once, do so with a local friend who hadn't outgrown that phase yet, it wasn't the same...it was no longer fun, because at the time I was partying and playing around I did not have the constant consciousness that I could potentially die (although, looking up the substances I took, you would have to take a helluva lot more than you need to just get high in order to die; so I suppose in retrospect my life was never in any real danger because I took just enough to feel good and never did anything dumb like driving or anything while on something.) But when I tried to party with this friend, see, I had my sights on things in my future like my wedding, having kids, blah blah...so I was unable to enjoy myself on them even though the sensations were the same as before. I was just too worried about jeapordizing my future and my friend(s) became disgusted with me because I was being a total "downer" so no one wanted to do that with me anymore. Which was ok. So, I had to admit that that chapter of my life was closed and could not be reopened.
Then I got prescribed a prescription drug for anxiety. This was while I was seeing a therapist, and under strict supervision by a professional...and what happened? I got addicted. No one told me at the time that I started taking this drug, Xanax, that I would eventually become addicted to it. I still am. (Unfortunately, my husband has been out of work, the economy and all that...and we're living with ourr beautiful 1 year old with his parents. We have a lot of stress in our lives and while I LOATHE being dependent on this med, both my counselor and my psychiatrist tell me this is NOT a good point in my life to try to add to my stress by going into rehab.)
The point of all this? You can do everything wrong and be ok (taking street drugs is ALWAYS risky) or you can do everything right, follow doctor's orders and wind up an addict. This makes about as much sense to me as the fact that one of my grandmothers never smoked a day in her life and she died of lung cancer; the other smoked a pack a day or more for 30 years and she never got lung cancer. She died of oher, totally unrelated things...mostly just that she was old and her systems were slowly ceasing to function. Where's the sense in that?! Where's the justice?? Not like I WANTED my smoker grandmother to die of lung cancer; just that it seemed so irrational to me that I think that's why I disregarded the risks of recreational drugs. I thought to myself, "when it's your time, it's your time so you might as well just do what you want and enjoy it." I didn't count on becoming an addict though.
I don't steal money to get my medicine or do bad things to people because of it. But I'm an addict just the same. I don't know what to do about your friend. I just wanted to show the "other side" of addiction: the socially sanctioned side.
We're a drug nation. Is it any wonder your friend and his girlfriend chose that avenue of escape?