I just want to convey how strong mental addiction to a drug is. Getting through withdrawals is just the beginning of the fight. The best thing you can do is find out why she started in the first place. From there let a counselor take over and work on unraveling whatever is killing her soul. Happy people don't stick needles in there arms.
I could not agree more. Addressing the complicated, and often even subconscious roots, of the mental aspects of dependence, compulsive use or addiction is what recovery actually means. Your daughter is young and on a positive note that means this will be easier for her than someone that has buried their pain for half a lifetime. On the other hand, a middle aged person or older person has the advantage of a certain amount of maturing. The best way that you can support your daughter in her explorations of the difficult aspects of emotional life is to explore that yourself. This is not to imply that you have terrible problems but to recognize that all of us have emotional pain and that we make adaptations and complicated strategies for avoiding that pain. Learning to live with self-acceptance (rather than self-denial) and a completely open heart is a very powerful life changing knowledge. If your daughter feels that you are there with her on a completely equal footing to her (you are both explorers!) rather than "you are fine and she needs fixing" then she will feel more trusting to address family issues that may be affecting her.
It is very hard as a parent to not blame yourself for your child's pain. If your child says, "When you said this it made me feel like that (something bad)" or, "When you and Dad do this it undermines my confidence" it can feel as if you
are being blamed and the tendency is to both feel defensive and blame yourself even further. The way I dealt with this was twofold: 1) I reminded myself that
I had once been a child, that I had been the daughter that translated messages from my own loving parents into self-defeating voices in my head, that I had suffered because of mistakes my parents had made and yet I love and respect both of my parents more than anything; 2) that should my child become a parent himself, he would surely also make mistakes, also create suffering in ways he did not intend for his own child--in other words it is inevitable in a parent child relationship that this will occur to some extent in very unique ways between every child and every parent. Every parent I know tries to react the opposite of something their own parents did that they have deemed hurtful, to emulate that which they felt their own parents did well and to sift through the current advice of their particular time and culture to do what "is best" for their children. The best thing we can do to help our children through difficulties in their own lives is to A) recognize their autonomy B) recognize and address anything in our family dynamics that could be contributing and C) do not confuse trying to fix someone's problems with being a reliable source of trusted support. This is a very tall order and it is imperative that you get all the support you can for yourself while you are trying to navigate this new terrain. I feel that a family crisis such as this can be an amazing leap forward if people can go into it without either the fear of being blamed or the need to blame others. When I hear blame, whether it is directed at oneself or at another (the addict blaming a parent, the parent blaming an addict, each blaming themselves) I see a situation bound for more pain.
Rumi wrote these beautiful lines and I think they apply in this situation:
"Out beyond the ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field.
I'll meet you there."
I am wondering also how your husband is dealing with everything?
)