My Daughter's Boyfriend Introduced Her to Oxycontin. My Husband Wants Him Out of Her Life But She's Resisting ....

by Jackie
(US)

My daughter has a boyfriend of one year who introduced her to oxy. She has been using with him on and off for 10 months. She is only 16 he is 18.

When he stopped using she stopped using. Everything came to a head this weekend when her dad and I found out the extent of her use. Her boyfriend went to rehab a few days ago and she is going through assessment and says she wants to get clean using an outpatient program.

The issue right now is she wants to be able to talk to the boyfriend on the phone and we don't know how to handle it. Her dad wants the kid gone forever and the more he pushes the more she pushes back. What do you do?

Answer

Hi Jackie

It's a delicate situation. Because as you say - the more your husband pushes, the more your daughter pushes back.

The thing is, even if your husband were to insist on your daughter having no further contact with this guy - there is no way you could stop her from seeing/communicating with him because if she's really determined she'll find a way. And then you just run the risk of alienating her totally.

I think the best approach would be to talk to her like an adult. Express your concerns calmly and rationally. Talk to her about how dangerous what she's doing is ... and that if she's serious about coming clean, she needs to be responsible about who she spends her time with because if she spends time with others drug users, she'll just end up using again.

These are also the kinds of things she'll learn about in her outpatient treatment program, but ultimately your daughter is going to do what she wants to do because you can't control and watch her every move. You just have to hope she's learned from this and is ready to change.

So I think now is not the time to be overly demanding of your daughter, but rather give her a voice, let you know that you're there for her, and that you trust her to make the right choices for herself.

Hopefully by giving her that responsibility she'll repay the faith you've shown in her.

Good Luck.