LPALM68

My 23 year old daughter is a drug addict, and I have just lost any caring towards her. As a mother, I feel horrible about it, but it is the way I feel. This is long but I have never really told anyone any of this, so any input or advice would be great.

Her father and I divorced when she was about 9. For the first year, he had zero contact with her and her sister. His excuse was that he was depressed and struggling with the divorce, so it was pretty much me on my own. Even after that initial year, if he took them once a month, that was alot.

I will be the first to admit I was not the best mother in the world. I was working, I myself was depressed, and my outlet was online games. I spent way too much time playing them and not enough time paying attention to my children. That is my regret.

As my daughter got older, I gave her too much freedom, I know that now. Because I was working she took the bus alot. She hung out with her friends alot and I never really gave her boundaries. These are regrets on my part.

I will say I guess I was naive. I have never known any drug addicts, and I never really suspected she was on drugs. But after the fact, I found out that she was a cocaine addict in probably 9-10th grade. During 11th and 12th grade she really pulled her act together. She told me then that she had been using cocaine, but was off now and her life was on track.

I remarried and had a baby, and my daughter watched her for me and did online school in 12th grade. We paid her and some of her money went towards a car we bought for her. She is great with kids.

She got a job at a daycare and worked there for about a year. Things around the house started to disappear. I suspected it was her, but because I had 2 older girls it is difficult to blame someone when you don't catch them red handed. I would confront her about it and she would deny it. She is an amazing liar.

Again me being naive I didn't know stealing and lying was a sign of drug addiction. She was working, paid off her car and I made the dumbest mistake of my life, I cosigned a car for her..and hid it from my husband.

She was making the payments fine..for about 6 months, then she quit her job, got a new one, got fired..she was in and out of jobs for a good year. She was living in my house, and she admitted to me that she was using oxy. I spoke with my ex husband and he and I put her in detox. She was in there 5 days, and us being stupid, thought she was all cured.

She moved out with her boyfriend. She got a new job, was making the car payments again. She asked to borrow some money to pay off some credit cards, and I lent her about $6,000 with the agreement she would pay it back. Never saw a cent. She started to flake out again. Stole money from her boyfriend, stopped paying rent, etc. They got kicked out of the apartment.

I let her move back home, told her no drugs in my house, set up alot of rules. A week later, my husbands debit card was used to withdraw $1000 from our account. I knew it was her, she was the only other person who knew his pin. He had let her use the card MONTHS before to purchase something at a store. I confronted her, she denied it but my husband insisted I kick her out. She was homeless.

But as usual she bounced back, found friends to live with, started sporadically making payments to me. She eventually talked her boyfriends mother into letting her live with them.

Then things started crashing. I got a phone call from the police the car had been impounded. Someone was speeding, they pulled him over and he had several warrants. I immediately called my daughter and she told me the car was stolen, blah blah I told her to report it to the police and she said she would. The police officer who had made the arrest called me and told me the guy had called my daughter on his cell, apologizing to her, calling her baby etc. She got the car out, made up some excuse how it was her friends boyfriend and he had just borrowed it this one and it would never happen again.

Why do I always want to believe her?

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I get another call from the police saying the car was involved in an "incident". After it all played out, my daughter had been with a guy at a hotel room, that was full of stolen goods and drugs. My daughter was not arrested, but they impounded the car. My daughter said she didnt know him that well, but her car was full of pawn tickets for things she had pawned, and paraphernalia for smoking heroin. I took the car from her and told her that was done. Her father and I talked and decided she needed help.

Its been very weird, her father pretty much took over finding her a place, paying for her to get down there, said he would cover what insurance didn't pay. Her entire life he hasn't paid for anything, and now he is stepping up and arranging things.

I got the car back, its 2 years into its lease with over 51000 miles on it. It had a broken windshield, damage to the front and rear. I had to tell my husband about it and obviously he wasn't happy. We are stuck with this car. My husband, from all the stealing, lying and this doesn't want anything to do with my daughter, and to be honest, I am at that point too.

She seems to be doing well in recovery. I spoke with a counselor last week who told me that she has been telling everyone that I was the one who introduced her to drugs, that I kept her last paycheck and she is worried that I am using it for "my addiction"-just blatant lies about me. My ex included me on an email to her therapist that said my daughter needs to work though HUGE issues with me. I am like WHAT? You were absent from her life for the most part, and the huge issues are with me. My ex also told me he feels that she is being honest now..which would mean that he feels her lies about me and drugs are true. It's all very frustrating and I find myself feeling like I don't care. I don't care if she gets better, I personally can't believe that she is, she is such a good liar that I feel she is just b.s.'ing everyone, I don't care what happens to her when she gets out, where she goes, what she does. I have just don't so much with no thank you's and no apologies I think I have just become bitter.

Am I a horrible mother for feeling like this?