Thank you for the replies! I am a highly logical thinker, and drug use is still an anomaly to me and I will probably never understand it completely.
I also forgot to mention that once the robbery happened we told her she couldn't stay there anymore so she hasn't been living at my moms for about two weeks. At first she made threats to kill herself so my sister called the police out of fear that she might actually do it. They found her and basically just told her to stop making threats. Her manipulation astonishes me.
I am still new to how an addict thinks and after reading through a few other posts on here I am incredibly shocked at the similarities. I personally believe she is so incredibly embarrassed by her actions that she forces herself to believe an alternate reality which further fuels her substance abuse. I would love to get some insight on how she thinks but its pretty much impossible.
The fact of the matter is that she is in deep. Once a person uses this much are there possibilities to make a recovery?
I find anything my niece says incredibly hard to believe. In fact, I've gotten to the point where I just assume everything is a lie. My sister is really struggling with the situation and I also have a little resentment for her choice to leave her with our mom, knowing the consequences. She also has a 3-year old so the family, work, life balance has been a lot for her to handle. It is worth noting that she visits often and checks in daily. Its just so difficult because she has to live her life too ya know?
She will never give up on her but she also enables her by getting her out of trouble and covering for her when things get bad. She finds it hard to accept the fact that her daughter is an addict and she blames all of her actions on the drugs. I agree that her actions are drug induced, but I also believe those actions must hold a consequence or she will never learn.
I think the biggest struggle with pressing charges is whether jail time will actually put her on a better path. Rehab could definitely help but unfortunately we don't get to choose one or the other- it's either all or nothing. I fear that once she got out of jail/prison, even if she wanted to make a change she would wind up using drugs again. Having drug charges alone would make it hard to find a job but adding grand larceny severely limits her options.
I know if she continues down this path and if we don't do something now, she will likely end up dead but are there any other options?