Talking to My Parents About My Drug Problem

....because you made a definitive statement saying they would react in a certain way. If you had suggested it as being a possibility rather than giving a definitive statement I wouldn't have called bullshit.

I would however have still suggested that getting support from parents is a wise thing to do unles you are absolutely sure they will make the situation worse.

I don't know how other people's parents will react, and accept that some will react in the way you describe which is why I shy away from making any definitive statements in response to a question like this. I just try to give my opinion or experience but keep things open and not say anything will happen for sure.

For most people getting support from every available avenue will be beneficial from what I have seen though.

edit: Just to really clarify....I was calling bullshit on the way you presented that possible outcome as a definite rather than calling bullshit on it being a possibility.

What you are describing is a best possible scenario, it is almost fantastical. There is simply too much stigma towards people who use drugs in our society. It is naive to think that the OP's parents have a greater likelihood of responding in such a way. The majority of parents do not. I do not believe it would worth the risk if there is any chance the OP's parents will react in the way jesse1988 described. Once that door is open it cannot be closed and they will never look at you or treat you in the same way ever again. In the worst case scenario it would probably help but a minor Adderall dependency does not call for it.
 
Hey, OP, I'm interested to hear from you about how you feel your parents might react. Much of it is going to depend on what your level of trust was before drugs were the issue. I am hoping that the fact that you have not come back to comment yet is not due to your parents freaking out and taking your phone/computer away.;)

Whether or not you choose to talk to your parents about what you are going through, the important thing is to get support before you go off to college. One of the best ways you might find support is from an eating disorder perspective. If you look at the reasons that you became dependent, body image sounds like the primary culprit. My friend had a lot of success in changing emotional eating with this workbook and doing counseling with the authors. When you get to school, try to develop a relationship with a counselor right away. All you have to say is that you are feeling vulnerable and you are looking for ways to make sure you get off to a good start. If you feel comfortable you can tell them more later.

I admire your instinct to reach out and get support and I think you need to stick with that instinct. Holding everything in just feeds the emotional eating/body image problems which in turn feeds the dependency on an appetite suppressing stimulant. Let us know how it's going when you can. Feel free to PM me if that would help.<3
 
I have a feeling she told them. She doesnt want to see the replies cause whats done is done and it doesnt matter at this point. If she was still struggling with it and i think she would have responded. Oh well, we make our own beds and like it or not we have to sleep in them. I wish her well.
 
Dont tell them. Your gonna regret it later. Trust me. All its gonna do is shine a huge spotlight on you even when your clean. They are uneducated on the topic so all their gonna be doing is waiting for the worst cause thats how media portrays people that use any kind of drug. Blood sucking vampires that are raping and burning cities to the ground.

If you wanna quit, thats fine but try and do it yourself first. Cause even if they know, it has to come from you. So why not have no attention on yourself instead of all of it on you.

I know what your feeling. Gulity about it all and you just want to get it off your chest. But all its gonna do is make them worry more about you. Its unproductive. Parents are extremely irrational when it comes to this cause they just want to hurry up and fix it which creates more issues.

So dont tell them. Trust me. You will regret it later if you do.

Totally disagree. Tell them and get this taken care of now while you are young. If you don't you could end up really regretting it later. I played my parents against each other for a long time when it came to my addiction. I knew how to get them to enable me. Then, finally, they just realized that I was a bullshitting active addict and they treated me as such. This set me down the path towards getting clean.

Your Dad is going to likely have suspicions now, and he might have told your mother. For me, one of the first signs that I was developing an addiction was when I started to lie to cover it up. If you lie, you will likely feel guilty about it. Guilt makes me use.

I really wish I would have gotten clean at your age. I knew I had drug problems by the age of 17... Didn't stop till I was 28, used again for another 2 years and am now clean again. Really didn't get serious until 28.

You are using a drug to function and get through life. This is self medication.
 
I have a feeling she told them. She doesnt want to see the replies cause whats done is done and it doesnt matter at this point. If she was still struggling with it and i think she would have responded. Oh well, we make our own beds and like it or not we have to sleep in them. I wish her well.

Sigh..We should press more pressure on the first comment...
 
I still think it is the definite outcome, but since you said I cannot be sure, and that is true, I can't be 100% sure, just like I can't be 100% sure I won't get hit by a bus today

Let's say op decide to listen to you, tell his parent about this, if you are wrong, when he lost his parent's trust for good, this is on YOU. Because you can't stand the thought of "definite", you have to argue that if there is one out there then I can't be sure. even the ratio is 1/1000000

If I say, odds is the same as hit by a bus.
You said there is some understanding parents out there, but the ratio show the truth.
also even the most understanding parent would turn really fast when you tell them things like drug use.
Also in my opinion, there is no "understanding parent" when it comes to drugs.

And just like people saids up there, there is no reason to tell them at this point. I don't think that is a addiction at all.
 
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It is her decision to make. People can share their experience, but that is just personal experience. We make our own choices.

NO!!!!

If she didn't ask for advise then yes, it is her decision to make, but since she ask, and some people here sold her the utopia fantasy worldview, then when she fucked everything up by listen to some dreamer here, then this is on them!!!

which is very likely what's happening now! Look at the date, see how long she didn't come check in
 
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It is a utopia told by dreamers. Think about it, sure the honest things sounds good and we dont want to be deceitful people but damn when it comes to drugs and parents it changes the relationships for a very long time if not forever. What parent, upon hearing the news of her child is doing drugs, is gonna go "its ok darling, lets talk about this." Trust is gone and everyone doesnt look at each other the same way. God help her if all they know about drugs is from the tube. She is really in for it.

The main problem is what happens after the initial telling of the truth. After that everything has changed. THey look at them different always in the back of their mind the question of is she on something or when is she gonna be on something? Is she really going here? Who is she gonna be with? Not only does the person get tired of being watched, but now you have set the parents on a road of worry that wont go away. There always gonna be on the road because they love their child and dont want to see them hurt. It never goes back to the way it was.

Or instead of this she deals with it on her own cause Adderall isnt the most serious thing to do and she learns from it, grows, and all the relationships stay the same. Again, ask yourself if what im gonna say/post does more harm then good.

So ya people need to have some caution when they post cause this does involve real people that can listen to whats on these forums and what you say can have an impact on someone situation and you cant just wash your hands freely of the situation cause you dont know this person and its not something you can physically see.
 
It is a utopia told by dreamers. Think about it, sure the honest things sounds good and we dont want to be deceitful people but damn when it comes to drugs and parents it changes the relationships for a very long time if not forever. What parent, upon hearing the news of her child is doing drugs, is gonna go "its ok darling, lets talk about this." Trust is gone and everyone doesnt look at each other the same way. God help her if all they know about drugs is from the tube. She is really in for it.

The main problem is what happens after the initial telling of the truth. After that everything has changed. THey look at them different always in the back of their mind the question of is she on something or when is she gonna be on something? Is she really going here? Who is she gonna be with? Not only does the person get tired of being watched, but now you have set the parents on a road of worry that wont go away. There always gonna be on the road because they love their child and dont want to see them hurt. It never goes back to the way it was.

Or instead of this she deals with it on her own cause Adderall isnt the most serious thing to do and she learns from it, grows, and all the relationships stay the same. Again, ask yourself if what im gonna say/post does more harm then good.

So ya people need to have some caution when they post cause this does involve real people that can listen to whats on these forums and what you say can have an impact on someone situation and you cant just wash your hands freely of the situation cause you dont know this person and its not something you can physically see.

I'm largely with these words, you have to judge the knowledge of the person you are going to impart the information to or misunderstanding is very likely to follow, this holds true for almost anything but the stakes here are so much higher.

I always promised myself that if my parents ever asked me directly if I used drugs I wouldn't lie, my father (although I never saw him smoke any) was vocal about how he had used cannabis in the past and felt it should be legal, my mother has always been one of those that would rather not know.

I couldn't and didn't hide my mental illness from them and my mother dealt with it well, my father much less so. My alcoholism was another thing I couldn't hide once I'd stopped drinking but like most people they don't view that as a drug problem.

I'm much older now and my drug use much less so the situation seems unlikely, especially given my parents but just to come right out and hit parents that have little knowledge of drugs that their child has a heroin or other serious drug issue seem foolish. If you need to tell them you're going to need to start with some education and plan the conversation carefully.

I would have thought a drug counselor would help you with either planning or actually planning and attending a meeting with you're parents to start making them aware of your situation. Not many parents are going to be 100% OK with such news regardless, I'd hope I'd be understanding and immediately want to offer comfort and support but words are cheap and there could well be some resentment for what I might see as their own stupidity for getting themselves in the mess to begin with....I hope I wouldn't do that.

In my family there's is a great tradition of not talking about or discussing or sometimes even acknowledging a difficult problem, when I've broken through that barrier it's never been easy but certainly in the case of my mother it has been positive, but in over 20 years my drug use beyond alcohol has never been mentioned but I know she knows I've had problems, it's an imperfection I'm prepared to live with as nothing would be gained in my situation with telling a 70 year old mother her little boy was such an irresponsible hedonist.
 
I dont wanna beat this topic to death but i feel its a relevant one that is very important esp to young people. Ill give a little insight to my experience with this.

I too couldnt hide or control my drinking so that was a early fact that my parents dealt with when i was living with them. One thing to know is my parents are both in recovery for many years so they know quite alot about addiction. They knew i smoked weed but like the guy above me it wasnt discussed and that is the extent of my known drug use to them.

The other things is a burden that i will deal with myself and I dont think its right of me to put some of that burden onto them cause it certainly would crush my mother and thats not something i care to do. I chose to put this in my body and i have to deal with it, not only the positives from it but its my responsibility to deal with the negatives. Im a grown man and its part of the deal with drugs. You man up and deal with the shitty side of it. Its not alll skittles and rainbows.

Sure their have been times when i just wanted to tell someone cause i know it would give me some relief, they can see what im dealing with sometimes. But my next thought is the result after that, its gonna be more harmful and cause more heartache then if i hadnt said anything and its not their fault im in this so why make them a part of it.

Just because it gets rough in my world doesnt mean i should bring them into it cause its gonna give me a little relief and give me someone i can complain too now.
 
It is a utopia told by dreamers. Think about it, sure the honest things sounds good and we dont want to be deceitful people but damn when it comes to drugs and parents it changes the relationships for a very long time if not forever. What parent, upon hearing the news of her child is doing drugs, is gonna go "its ok darling, lets talk about this." Trust is gone and everyone doesnt look at each other the same way. God help her if all they know about drugs is from the tube. She is really in for it.

This.

For every parent like herbavore, there are a hundred who are not. My parents finding out about my addictions was one of the worst things to ever happen to me. Avoid telling them at all costs unless they are the exception to the norm.
 
Meh...I would expect people to be able to make an informed decision of how their family will react, calling it in any one particular way for definite is something that simply cannot be done though.

My family relationships have often hit awkward times due to drugs, my (big) little brother once tried to smash my head in with a baseball bat. All said and done it's better that everything's out in the open though.
 
You know guys, I was thinking about this this morning when I woke up and it reminded me of how I felt when I started a relationship with a woman when I was young. I'm bi but at the time I thought that I was gay and had so much fear about telling my family. It wasn't so much that I thought they would be horribly homophobic because I knew they wouldn't. What got under my skin the most was that I thought they would never be able to see me without looking at me through that lens. In fact, I was scared of that with the whole world and that was a huge obstacle to coming out. What I finally realized was that this could not affect me, except as a minor irritant, unless I looked at myself as somehow lesser or abnormal or whatever. I see this the same way, I guess. If your parents continue to see everything you do from the moment you tell them about your drug problem through that lens how will this affect you? If you have internalized the stigma it will affect you greatly. If you work to not internalize the stigma it will be their fear that you see, not their judgment and you can approach it that way if you want a relationship.

This thread has touched some very raw places for all of us. We all want to be accepted and seen for our unique and changing selves within our families. Many of us will live and die without ever getting or giving that and that is sad. I remember one of my son's counselors saying to my husband and I that the greatest gift you can give another family member is the vulnerability to show your authentic self. This creates the safe space for them to reciprocate. I would be lying if I were to say that my son and I never fought about drugs, that there was never a time where I was not suspicious--whether founded or unfounded. One thing to remember when thinking about parents is that we are programmed by both our biology and our society to protect our offspring. When you were an infant your mom and dad were expected to completely control your environment to keep you safe. It can be a hard transition for parents to gradually let go of this level of control but we each stumble through it the best we can. Sometimes a crisis like this (addiction or anorexia or self-harm to name some) can be the catalyst for a deeper learning for all concerned.

I don't delude myself that most families will handle this seamlessly. I have seen downright abuse take place as well as the more common reactions of denial and anger and terror. I never wanted to live in a family that kept secrets, a family where no real trust existed. As a teen that is the kind of family I had and so I got as far away from them as possible for a number of years. Eventually love trumped all that secrecy and judgment and we came back together stronger than ever. I guess I see the fights and the struggles we went through as part of the process of developing deeper trust. I could not have perceived that when I was in the thick of it and so maybe it is only hindsight that affords that view.

If anything, this thread just strengthens my resolve to fight the War on Drugs that fills our society with ignorance and terror, stigma in the form of hatred and fear and impacts so many families so terribly. And what is one of the best and most radical ways to fight that stigma? Fight the internalization within. Refuse to carry the weapon for your enemy and your enemy will find themselves without a weapon.
 
I am not trying to convince people here,
Everything I said, is to prevent one person to ruin her life for nothing,
I am not here to argue can I be 100% sure or 99% or 50%sure for whatever
since she didn't check in anymore,
there is no point for me to argue with anyone, for anything anymore,
I just hope op's parents is not the reason she didn't check the post.

if few days later she ask for help about grounded by "out of control" parents and gets take away her phone and internet,

please let me know.
if that is the case, we are all responsible
 
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After someone kindly send me a pm and his word calm me down,
then I decide to read all my replay in this thread,
I realize I am a little rude to some people.

I am still standing on the same opinion,
but I apology to the people that I offended
 
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the quicker she starts trying to get help the better she will be...imo. Trying to stop a drug or alcohol addiction on your own is nearly impossible, personal experience from years of trying btw. The more people that know, like immediate family/friends the better. They will be there to help after they do the bitching and crying thing, they may even choose to go to meetings or see a therapist to get a better understanding of what addiction is really all about. The sooner the better I say.
 
Herbavore, I respect your opinion on this issue, I really do.
As much grief as my parents gave me for using drugs as a youngster (they were of the 'older generation' that did not understand) - but I think it depends entirely upon the OP's relationship with her parents.

Yes, there are general rules that apply (ie from a kid's perspective, it is better not to 'fess up) - but my experience with hiding things from my parents has meant that I was perfectly equipped to hide things from people close to me later in life -
not a good life skill to learn.
But I did not realise this until I was older and wiser.
And I don't know if I will ever really have a proper relationship with my parents because of the problems we had connecting in my teenage years.

I agree with herbie - if you think it will help, reaching out for help is probably the best case scenario (depending, of course, on a whole lot of factors - but if you think you need to talk to your folks, I think you should).
 
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spacejunk, the most addict-like name, the wisest words.

Also, I would like to add that all people and cultures are different and it's really difficult for us to judge over the internet whether or not your specific situation would be suitable to tell your parents.
 
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