Written by Bethesda’s Director and Pastoral Addictions Counsellor: Colin Garnett.
Events are true, names and places are changed.
A Mom and Dad turned up at Bethesda this week with a 24-year old drug addicted daughter.
Mom and Dad had tears in their eyes, the daughter had attitude in hers. She did not speak to them, she spoke at them. Dad, a decent hard working guy, had so far been unable to say no to his little girl, she was (still) the apple of his eye. Her tone toward him was aggressive and bullying. Mom sat frozen in her emotions, afraid of her child. At the end of his tether, Dad hopelessly shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in despair. “This is it, I have had enough”.
The daughter coldly hit back: “I can control my drinking and I am not going to stop smoking weed”.
Both parents had watery eyes.
I asked if I could make a few suggestions.
All three of them sat silent.
To the parents I said: “Get yourselves into a parent support group and prepare yourselves for the worst. This girl is going to get passed around the drug culture like a blow up doll and will eventually end up face down in a ditch somewhere. It may take a few years, but the addiction is going to kill her. The more money you allow her to manipulate out of you the quicker that death will be. Stop now. Cut her off completely, as of now. Change your cell phone numbers. Change the locks on your doors at home. Get a court order around her that if she approaches your door or the door of your parents, she gets arrested and sectioned for 12-months. Expect her to be selling herself.
The daughter started to rage. “You have only known me for five minutes how can you ...”
I cut her off. “Five minutes? I have been working with arrogance like yours for over a decade. Look at your self, be really honest for once. You milk these guys for money with lies day after day, and if ever they should dare say ‘no’ to you, you honestly feel hard done to because of a twisted sense of entitlement that you carry within you”.
She started to cry.
“As soon as you are challenged you turn the tears on to order and expect sympathy from the people you bully. You mix with society’s low-life because you have no confidence other than the false confidence that you get from the chemical and you get your identity from people who have no identity of their own. You look for acceptance through behaving unacceptably and will go to any length to fit in with a sub-culture of miss-fits! You do not have one friend in the world, and yet you tell the world to go away”.
The crying turned to sobs.
She looked up and said; “let me think about it”.
I asked “think about what”?
“About coming to Bethesda”.
“Forget it” I said. “Get back on the street and suffer for a few more years, and then when you can use the word please, I might consider allowing you in”.
She attempted the victim approach; “But you have insulted me and hurt my feelings”.
“I have only spoken the truth to you, I cannot insult you with by pointing out the truth about you, if it hurts, it is because you do not like the truth about what you have become”.
I then invited her to leave the premises.
In closing I said to her: “When you smoke your next weed tonight or take your next drink, try not to think of me and of what you are walking away from right now. Now go”.
They left.
I went home feeling sorry for the parents but confident that I had totally sabotaged her drug using. I knew she would ring.
First thing the next morning she rang.
“Hi, how are you”?
“I got drunk last night and smoked weed, but I could not stop thinking about everything you said to me. I have been awake all night, thinking it all over and over”.
“And .........?” I enquired.
“And I want what you have. Can I come and stay at Bethesda please”?
“Of course you can, see you later”.
This young lady is now settling in at Bethesda and she has already seen; ‘there is something different here”.
Sometimes it takes the mercenary approach of inflicting as much damage as possible as quickly as possible to save lives. Get in behind enemy lines and fight your way out with hostages. This young lady was prisoner of her addiction.
This morning when she woke up sober, her face had even changed.
I think we might see a future addictions counsellor with this one.
2 comments:
Thanks for sharing this story with us Ashley.
fyi-i didn't write this. had someone here ask me that. i wish i had though, it sounds like my life. "ashley's dad" can comment if he wishes :)
Post a Comment