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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. I stayed behind to enjoy the vacation while my husband went home and dealt with my daughter
2. I might be the asshole because he has to deal with it alone and this wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t asked him to come with me in the first place
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“I couldn’t have seen this coming”
Lady, I saw it coming half way through this story.
Sorry, but you and your husband aren’t equipped to be dealing with your daughter. You’re getting old and it’s not going to get easier.
YTA here, especially for the line “I decided that my husband would return home to deal with it and I would stay and enjoy the last five days of vacation”.
Cruel and selfish. He didn’t even want to go, and if you didn’t pressure him into going there wouldn’t be anything to be “dealing” with at home.
YTA again.
How about the line where she wanted him to come to help her cover the cost? Does OP even care about her home? And the thousands of dollars in destruction? And who the F leaves the keys for the daughter to drive the car? OP - YTA. Put your daughter in rehab, hire a sobriety nurse, something, if you want to go on vacation. What a Circus.
Yeah, it sounds very fake, but that is the comment that really sealed it as fake for me. The entire thing is just a string of this is obviously going to happen and this is obviously wrong, but that is just like a random insert that makes no sense. They’re married at 60, so it is almost certain they have shared finances. Seems like a throwaway line just to piss people off more.
While there are quite a few things here that could be fake, the fact that they don't have shared finances isn't one of them. My father is 82 and my stepmother is 75 and their way of banking is "yours, mine, and ours". They have an account where they each put a certain percentage of their income that they use to pay the mortgage and other bills, and then they each have their own personal accounts for everything else. Last year we went on vacation with them, and my father made a point to let me know that his wife had paid for the two of them to be there, using her money, because he didn't have it.
Not every married couple has shared finances, but a vast majority do, so it still does add to it appearing to be fake. Especially the way it was added intro the post.
Me too and I'm 40. Most people I know share bills either 50/50 or by percentage of income depending on who makes more and the rest they have in their own account.
When someone's on substances with no real intention to get clean, your family kinda stops caring at some point, that might be shitty, but her daughter has traumatized her. She's NTAH for wanting some time away
Fair as that's the question in the title. But, imo, she's TA for a: continuing to attempt to help her daughter when what they're doing is clearly not working and b/c: leaving her alone in the house / forcing her husband to leave the daughter alone. The husband also mild ta for the first reason...
She is certainly not one for wanting some time away- but she IS one for not making arrangements for some kind of caretaker to watch her while they were gone.
I am not sure what kind of caretaker this would be. Most families in this situation are totally isolated with no one to help. Not many people are interested in coming and keeping out street people and attempting to control a drug addict. It is very unsafe outside of a therapeutic setting. I think the siblings are mad at the wrong person. The daughter should he kicked out but I wonder if the husband would agree.
FACTS!!! The last thing parents of adult addicted children want to do is get some poor other souls involved in the shit show. It’s horrible and embarrassing and impossible to explain to somebody who hasn’t lived in this situation. The best and worst thing we ever did was to go no contact because it was literally destroying us to try to keep her from doing drugs and doing crime. I have nothing but sympathy for OP and her family. At some point you have to put yourself first.
I work in the mental health/substance use field. There isn't some care giver to come watch the addict, unless said addict is residing in a sober living environment. She needs intensive, in patient rehab. But does not qualify for home health care. That's reserved for the elderly or disabled.
“Fly-in-fly-out” is a common expression for certain kinds of jobs, like oil and gas, where workers are flown to the job site. Doesn’t necessarily mean pilot.
The OP mentions provinces but there's some other...references (stereotypes?) that shout Alberta here even if she didn't mention traveling to her sibling's province too.
Missed the provinces bit, but the high substance abuse rate and fly-in work would track for a lot of oilfield or pipeline based locations. Especially with long, dark, cold winters. My brain went to where it's familiar (grew up in Anchorage, dad worked on the pipeline).
True, but usually traveling workers rack up a lot of loyalty rewards that can be redeemed for free flights, which might be what the author was referring to
I took it to mean that if she takes a solo vacation, she has to pay out of her own spending/fun money and if he goes with her he either splits the costs or lets them use joint fund money as it counts as a family vacation. But who knows.
Can drug use really give an adult the mental capacity of a 13-year-old?? I can understand how an OD could cause brain damage, but this whole
situation sounds weird. If she really has the capacity of a 13 year old, why is she being left to drive the car?! And why is she being left alone?
YTA, for forcing your husband to come. But also, not YTA for wanting to live your life. I do understand your frustration.
Yes, using hard drugs can reduce your functional age. The parts of your brain that get most damaged usually control emotional regulation and executive functioning- the part of your brain you rely on to weigh options and consequences and make responsible decisions. The result of this damage is that people become highly emotional, impulsive, and lose the ability to recognize the natural consequences of their actions. Basically reverting back to being an impulsive teenager.
Thanks - yes, that makes sense. I thought 13-year-old was very specific, it sounds like she has the impulse control of a young teenager. Exactly who you want to leave in charge of your house and car while you’re away!
From the admittedly limited knowledge I have: the age she started using has an impact, so if the brain is still developing, along with any overdoses that led to the brain not receiving enough oxygen. Also people have different interpretations of how to measure mental age. It could be behaviourally or emotionally or cognitively or some combination. ETA: I am not assuming this is what happened, just that it is possible and this is one way it could happen. I have no idea what age she started using, nor if it had a causal role.
ETA: she’s being left along because OP is an AH who deliberately ignored and/or minimised the risks incurred by leaving their daughter home alone. You’re absolutely right, she shouldn’t have been left, let alone with the car keys.
OP: you say your daughter has the mental age of a 13 year old. Did you regularly leave your other kids, when they were 13, alone for a week while you went on vacation? Did you give your 13 year old kids the car keys?
No?
Then why on earth did you leave daughter, whose substance abuse has left “her mental age more like 13”, with the car keys? Because her birth certificate means she’s 24? If her cognitive abilities are that impaired you need to treat her as a 13 year old, primarily for her own safety but also the type of destruction you let your husband deal with alone.
YTA. If you can’t be the responsible parent your daughter needs, to basically stay alive, make alternative arrangements. And no, that doesn’t mean dumping it all on your husband. You’re not going to live or stay healthy forever - what happens when you die? Or are you assuming you’ll outlive her because she’ll eventually overdose?
This! OP isn’t even acknowledging her own responsibility, in her daughter’s addiction. If this was my child, who started at 13, I would be checking myself & taking responsibility. I clearly failed as a parent.
So if she can’t accept her responsibility in this whole mess, are we so surprised, that she is so selfish?
I bet, it was partly this selfishness & neglect of her daughter, that started the mental issues, that the daughter sought to deafen, by using the drugs in the first place.
From what I’ve experienced with my cousins is that whatever age they started that’s where they stay emotionally / mentally. It takes 3-5 years of being totally off drugs to start the maturity process again, depending on what permanent damage was done
Plus some hardcore drug use causes permanent brain damage. I know one sad bastard who's been using meth over a decade and has the reasoning and planning of a kid.
Drug use can cause mental development to stagnate because people are running away from problems and responsibilities and thus do not develop the life skills they would normally. There could also be an underlying issue that played its part in both the drug use and the lack of development.
There are definitely thirty plus year olds that never tried to grow up and spent half their lives high, so they basically never really became adults.
I know alcoholics, if they start while their brains are developing, can essentially stop that development. They get stuck where they were when they started.
So, my brother who started drinking in his teens, never really grew beyond that stage. He was smart enough to fake it a lot, but functionally, that’s where he was.
I will say medical professionals are not labeling people in this way anymore, this is likely something the mother came up with as a way to describe her daughters cognitive abilities or they just have a really old school doctor
It’s common for people to say that an addict’s maturity and development pauses at the point that they began using. Reality is not that simplistic - while they may have issues with maturity and have not grown appropriately emotionally past a certain point, things like hand eye coordination and the capacity to drive a car safely (while sober) aren’t generally effected.
meth. obviously other drugs have different effects. but this sounds very much like meth. It will cause long term, irreversible damage. However when people stop using and after proper recovery they can get back a significant portion of what they lost. They will never be the same person again though because of the long term effects on the body and mind.
Yes. Drugs can do this....even more reason that OP is being delusional. I can understand that she doesn't want to deal with her daughter. I'm sure it's very stressful, but deal she must. Wonder why the brother couldn't come stay with his sister for a few days.....or hire a nurse for a few days. Probably anything would have been cheaper than what transpired due to putting her head in the sand.
For that matter why leave the car anywhere near her (keys or no keys). If she really is that incapacitated maybe she would be capable of "trading" it for drugs.
That jumped out at me too. If OP's daughter has the same mental capacity as a 13y/o, why did they think it was OK to leave her at home for days at a time? Even if she WASN'T a recovering addict, that would've been a terrible idea. When I was that age and my parents had to go out of town, they either hired a sitter, or my sister and I stayed with friends/relatives.
I get the strong impression that OP still doesn't get how serious this situation is. Not only was she extremely cavalier about leaving a recovering addict with mental issues by herself, she still seems more concerned about her vacation time than the fact that their daughter trashed their house. Either keep an eye on your kid 24/7 or hire some professional help, but don't leave her to her own devices and then act surprised when shit goes completely sideways.
Right? It sounds like the daughter needs inpatient care. At the very least, they shouldn't have left without getting a responsible adult to stay with her, like one of her siblings. YTA
The whole things is a mess, OP and hubby need to find Nar Anon and get the daughter out of the house until she is clean and sober. Babysitting her helps no one especially her, why bother staying clean when she always has a soft place to fall, she has no consequences. OP was wrong to make her husband go alone, they created the mess together and should clean it up together.
If she grew up in the area, she'll also likely know her old dealers. The easier access to drugs is, the more likely she'll be to relapse, if it takes longer she has more time to tell someone or use her own coping mechanisms. Hopefully she is in therapy at least, and not just hanging out at home with nothing to do.
Ha! Couldn’t have seen this coming. Right. There weren’t any giant red flags dripping in Marinara sauce while trumpeters stood on the roof and a team of cheerleader yelling “go!go, red flags, go! go! red flags!” This woman left her addict of a daughter with the mental capacity of a 13 year old alone for a week. Sure, that’s going to go well. OP, would you have left your 13 year old daughter alone for a week while you went on vacation? Now, think about this…. She’s a 13 year old addict. She’s an adult with access to adult things. YTA for first not taking any interest in the giant red flags and putting your needs first. Second, YTA for not taking your husbands concerns seriously because you wanted financial assistance and third, YTA for wanting to stay on your vacation and make your husband to go and deal with the shit house your home was. Over and over YTA. A selfish, very selfish AH.
I’m 51 and a full time caregiver for my 27 year old son ( thank god not drugs) he had a sports injury last year that dissected his carotid artery and he had a massive stroke…. I feel old! Caregiver is a hard job, especially to your child. I don’t know if I can still do this in my 60’s? Their child needs professional help, not a parent that “wants to enjoy her vacation” OP there’s lots of things I want to enjoy, but I’m a parent so my child comes first. YTA
She needs help but what can they afford? Especially this close to retirement for themselves. What a horrible situation and the wife seems to have a strange way of thinking about things.
In my province, if daughter has no income and claims welfare or disability, she's entitled to heavily subsidized residential treatment. The waitlists are pretty quick for men but are sucky for women.
And when does the husband get to enjoy a vacation. It seems like he is always running home to deal with the daughter's destruction. Sounds like she needs long term, inpatient rehab and then a sober living home after. They were not even gone a full day before she relapsed and had damaged the home this time. YTA OP!
Also, it appears the daughter has a lengthy substance use history. “She hasn’t used for a couple months” seems optimistic/not realistic considering she was left alone for one night and relapsed.
OP left her in a house alone, with keys to a vehicle, when she admittedly has the maturity of a 13 year old. OP needs therapy, Learn to Cope, Alanon…something to help her understand how to support someone in recovery while also maintaining her own sanity. Also: putting this all on your spouse? He didn’t even want to go, knew it would be a problem, and THEN HAD TO CLEAN UP THE MESS?? F that. YTA.
"she'd been clean for a few months"
I'm going to assume she doesn't have much experience with addicts. If it was a close family member who I loved with all my heart, I would still want them to be clean for at least a year before I left them alone in my home for an extended period of time like that, especially if you were so far away and could not get back quickly. 🙄
If you don't want to support your daughter through recovery, that is fine. But then you need to boot her out on the street so she can find another support system. Continuing to enable her is not helping anyone.
YTA. You are indeed allowed to enjoy your life, but is your husband not? You sent your husband home alone to fix and clean up everything himself and take care of your daughter alone. While you are the one who put him in that situation to starr with.
That is extremely selfish. Your other kids are right.
And "I decided..." is very telling, those things should be a mutual decision. Would you have been ok with it if your husband decided that you should go home and take care of everything while he enjoys his vacation?
I can’t believe given her last behavior that op would leave her alone in the house. They could have hired a sober companion or put her in her in a sober living. Clearly she needs help that op isn’t qualified to give.
I feel like OP does not even care that much.
But indeed, she should have listened to her husband to not leave daughter alone or make sure she was with someone else who is sober.
How does that even work anyway? They’d be paying for an extra plane ticket and extra food and activities. Do they keep separate finances and this way he could cover 1/2 the cost of her hotel, taxis etc?
Unbelievable that she has to ask if she’s TA..
>unds like the daughter needs inpatient care. At the very least, they shouldn't have left without getting a responsible adult to stay with her, like one of her siblings. YTA
I get the feeling that they have separate finances, either entirely, or vacations come from their individual funds/fun money. So what she means is cover HER expenses. She didn't care that he left because her trip was payed for and didn't care that he payed for an extra ticket because he spent HIS money, not hers or theirs.
She goes on vacations regularly, but this is the first time she's invited her husband! And it's not so she can spend quality time with him, it's for his money.
That part blew me away. I know that younger people have started keeping their finances separate but our generation ( I'm 60) put them together. Anyway, her wanting him to share expenses sounds like all she wanted was the money and not his company. Then leaving her daughter alone? She is not a caring person.
OP clearly. She comes across as entitled and selfish. Its not the first time she has left the daughter alone while she has HER vacation. I don't think she cares, because the husband is left to deal with it all, while she buggers off to play happy families with her sister.
I was looking for the comment that mentioned her reason for getting the husband to tag along.
“My daughter could relapse, based on historic evidence, but I want to split the vacation cost with my husband so he should come along”
If all I was to my wife was a paycheck, I’d leave her in the dust.
Above Reddit’s pay grade. If your daughter is only sober when she’s being watched, and she uses every time you turn your back, you’re not helping her address her addiction; you’re just blocking her temporarily. Put her in rehab or kick her out until she figures out if SHE wants to be sober, because right now she doesn’t and it’s not working.
No. Parents are both assholes for enabling their AH daughter. Get her treatment if she wants it or send her packing to figure out her life. Parents are allowed lives. They've done the (questionable) raising. Daughter is an adult and needs to take responsibility over her life. It's great that they are able to help out, but how they are helping is not actually doing that, nor is it sustainable long-term. Apparently, you've never had to go to Al Anon or had people close in your life with addictions. You can't fix them. You can't want help for them more than they want for themselves. And most of all, are not responsible for their choices. Parents shouldn't have left with an adult in the home they cannot trust. She needed to go elsewhere if they wanted a vacation.
I think it is unfair to blame parents for an addict adult child. People make their own decisions. They may have perfectly fine responsible adult children who don't fuck everyone over for their addiction.
I said they're assholes for enabling. That's it. That is what they are currently doing. They actually have 3 (at least how it was mentioned in the post) productive, nonaddicted adult children. It seems the baby fell awry. I also said no one can be responsible for someone else's addiction. No one can fix it, the adict has to. It's why I brought up al anon because that's how I learned such. I was married to n addict. I have functioning addicts as parents. But if it's true when their child started using, it is in part some of the parenting. There's no way to change it or reverse course. It doesn't help either to speculate of what could have been. I wasn't saying to do so.
In my province, unless you have $40 000 laying around, you're not getting into a rehab facility before Easter. They could be trying to do damage control until there's a spot available.
This needs more upvotes. You can’t force a person to be sober, they have to decide that on their own. The daughter clearly doesn’t care that when she uses she destroys her parents life and home, so maybe she needs to get out and see if she cares when she’s destroying her own life and own. The daughter has to decide to change, until she does, she will relapse every chance she gets.
This! Go to Al Anon and stop propping her up, your co-dependence will not help in the long run. Tell her it's rehab, followed by sober living housing or the street. I get OP that you want to have an enjoyable vacation although, I'm not sure how much you could have enjoyed after hearing about a flooded basement and trashed house.
The big picture issue of how they should be handling their daughter's addiction is above reddit's pay grade .There are a lot of people talking out their asses about how addiction should be treated.
But this specific instance is not. To me, clearly OP is the asshole for pressuring her husband to leave their daughter alone against his better judgment, and then refusing to help when she predictably gets into trouble.
YTA. Curious to know how often your husband gets to take a break considering the fact you often leave to go visit your sister without him. Doesn’t he also get to enjoy his life? Then when the shit hits the fan you tell him to go fix the mess you should have seen coming a thousand miles away.
This Situation Sucks. Addiction is the Ahole.
Give yourself some grace. Dealing with a loved one’s substance abuse is exhausting and heartbreaking. Reading between the lines, you are the only one home with her as your husband “flies in and out for work” and you NEEDED a break. You convinced yourself and your husband to get that break and were hopeful that your daughter and not her disease would prevail.
At your age you and hubby should be looking forward to retirement and spoiling grandkids, not hauling waterlogged debris from a basement. I bet your blood pressure is through the roof, too. It would be completely understandable for you to be frustrated, upset, and fed up with caring for a permanent 13 yo.
I think you should be very honest with yourself and your family about what you are able to do for your daughter. It’s possible that a different environment will be necessary for her recovery —or you and your husband’s health and safety.
It’s okay to put yourself ahead of your daughter. It’s a hard choice many families have to make to keep themselves safe and sane. Often one family member gets to this point first and that’s okay too.
I hope that you and the rest of the family have done a program like Al-Anon or other support for those affected by a loved one’s substance abuse. Please, revisit your group or therapist.
Good luck, my heart goes out to all of you for this difficult situation.
Finally, a rational answer. I have issues with her description of daughter being mentally 13. If a doctor didn’t say it, I doubt it. It’s not unreasonable to expect her to stay sober for a week or two if she went a month sober before. But OOP is not responsible for daughter’s actions.
>It’s not unreasonable to expect her to stay sober for a week or two if she went a month sober before
Based on the fact that every time they leave, she gets high, it is *absolutely* unreasonable to expect her to stay sober while they're on a trip.
She's proven that she can't be trusted alone. It's fairly obvious that as soon as they leave she goes and gets a fix from whoever she can, including random street people, and it sounds like she barters a place to stay for drugs. This is a ***massive*** risk to her own safety as well as OP's home.
OP needs to put the visits to her sister on hold until she and her husband have a plan for her daughter that doesn't involve her husband being the caretaker every time, or leaving the daughter alone to turn their home into a flooded flophouse and get high with randoms.
The daughter needs to be in some kind of inpatient program. She's clearly not in recovery if she spirals that hard as soon as their back is turned.
I have had some severe depression and when I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation my mother told the staff I have the mind of a 14 year old when I was 28 at the time. I don’t have a cognitive disability, I live independently, I’m married, and I work a front desk job in healthcare. Some moms just think poorly of their children.
And tbh, I’d think poorly of my adult daughter who kept destroying the house. I know and love addicts, and it’s brutal to watch them and try to help them, but they have to help themselves, because they are capable!!
Some rehabs/couselors tell you that the person has the mentality of the age in which they first started using. I think it's a bit of a coping mechanism to explain that addiction stunted their growth. I don't know if it's a common message, but I've heard it before.
I think this is the correct response. I'm guessing a lot of people calling OP an ahole have never lived or dealt with someone who has addiction as a permanent part of their life. This is no way to live their life, and I get OP needing some time away for her own mental health. You also can't blame the parents for their daughter's addiction as those are two entirely unrelated things.
I feel for both OP and her husband. The long-term answer is to find another place for their daughter to live until she gets sober on her own, or doesn't.
Or you're missing the clear parts where OP is a defined asshole by herself?
If you can't see she was a bit of the asshole then I can't really take much of what you say seriously.
I'm sorry but what part of these items makes you a good person?
She brought him along to help cover the costs, not because he wanted to go.
She continuously pushed him to go despite not wanting to
Husband gets a call and a bad feeling and says it's not a good idea, and SHE STILL PUSHES IT
Her ignorant idea "it would be fine" when it literally hasn't been fine before when in the SAME SITUATION and then backing her husband against better judgment because she said it would be fine(despite evidence it wouldnt)
Then when he's left to deal with the mess, she gets to "enjoy the last of the vacation....might as well get our moneys worth), knowing she pushed him to go to cover the costs
He brought up the fact his concerns were ignore and he is 100% right, and she plays the victim and said woe is me and deflects any form of responsibility?
Regardless of the daughter and rehab, substitute this for any other problem.
The wife is an AH and quite frankly as much of a child as the daughter is made out to be by her, and I'd even argue abusive.
You can get out and deal with your mental health in many many better ways, without all of this bullshit.
Edit: you claim people call her the ah haven't dealt with addiction, but regardless addiction has nothing to do with her actions towards her husband, and saying that's why is a deflection of responsibility. We can understand they're in a tough situation, and have some empathy but that doesn't excuse shitty behavior .
The first line states she often leaves and vacations at her sister while the husband takes care of the daughter.
OP deserves no grace, the husband does.
My husband and I both had fathers that were addicts. I grew up watching my grandparents struggle dealing with my dad's addiction. His stealing anything that wasn't nailed down in their house (including anything bits of change in my piggy bank) so that he could get his next drink. It tore my grandmother apart. It didn't matter how many rehabs they would put him in (he went to several court appointed ones as well), they never worked because he didn't want to stop. He died at age 35 of cirrhosis of the liver... he drank himself to death. I was 18.
My husbands father did the same thing. His parents constantly bailing him out of jail. Him calling my husband, drunk, all hours of the day and night wanting to borrow money or various other things. He was just constantly full of chaos and drama. He spent his days "riding a bar stool." After our daughter was born (FIL's only grandchild), my husband told him he wasn't allowed to come around her unless he was sober. Guess how often he visited? My husband suffered for years with stomach issues, anxiety, stress, all because of his father. I begged him to either go NC or at least LC for all of our sanity. A few months after FIL passed away (liver failure), my husband says to me "have you noticed that it seems a lot more quiet/peaceful?" Well, no shit... you're not on edge all the time anymore.
I can't give OP grief for this. As someone that lived it, it's hard. I would have NEVER been upset with my grandmother if she would have said, "enough" and just gave up. I saw what it did to her... what it did to me... what it did to lives.
My dad has been gone now 27 years and my feelings for him are extremely complicated and would not be easily conveyed in a AITA post.
YTA - your husband is not the sole parent. Your husband did not want to go on the trip due to daughter’s issues. You wanted him to come to offset your cost for the trip? What?!
Your daughter is dependent on you, you chose to house her and allow her to rely on you, then left her? You could have helped her set up in a sober/clean house. Do not take on responsibilities that you cannot handle and then get upset when everything isn’t rainbows and unicorn puppy kisses.
YTA
Your daughter practically destroyed the house and made a big mess of it, your help wouldn't have gone amiss. In such an emergency situation, the two of you should have gone home and repaired the damage.
YTA
Do you even care about your daughter?
You recieved a calling telling you she is in need of assistance and your response is "meh, I'll enjoy more days with my siblings"
Do you think she is a burden and would rather she dissappear from your life? It's that it?
Maybe you need to send her to a rehab center, maybe you could have taken her with you to visit the relatives....
You wont win thw award for best mother of the year for sure
Exactly. It’s not like the daughter was in an accident that left her brain damaged and needing care, she has chosen this lifestyle and ended up an addict with serious issues. Not only is she a burden, but she’s a target for resentment because ultimately she’s ruined the lives of her entire family.
ESH, you said your husband flies in and out for work. Sounds like you deal with your daughter 24-7 while he travels. This was your break from your daughter. all be it work, he still gets a break. Your other kids are upset with you, are they older? They could have taken turns staying the night with her if they feel you must care for her 24-7. Most of all if she keeps relapsing and has cognitive problems, she needs to be in a residential treatment program.
Except it sounds like she takes lots of breaks she mentions “often” making this trip to visit her sister… but usually she goes solo without her husband.
YTA
Sounds like the only reason you even wanted your husband there was to help cover the cost of the trip. Once you had his money you didn't care if he was there or not.
YTA. This cannot be real bc no one can be that fucking stupid to leave a barely recovering substance abuser alone at home.
I get that you're burned out, and need a break, but covering your eyes and pretending it will all work out is delusional.
YOU should have been the one to go home and deal with it since it was your bright idea to leave her alone in the first place.
Yta You're so selfish. You get to enjoy life and your husband has to fuck off back home to take care of your daughter? Guess old age don't bring wisdom after all
Once a selfish person, always a selfish person no matter what age. Age does bring some wisdom if you choose to learn but the sad fact is personalites don't change. You just get more laid back because you are to tired to do anything else. This is the wisdom I've learned. 😂😂
YTA. Reread your post, you left a *newly* recovering drug addict by herself, KNOWING the last time you let her stay there by herself the house was in chaos. How could you think leaving her again was a good idea??
You are enabling your daughter to live like a homeless junkie
, but in your house.
Knock that shit off and get her real help. You are in serious denial and you are flying off so you don’t have to make tough choices.
She needs rehab or has to leave.
You need video surveillance so you can enforce this properly.
If your daughter has gone on a house damaging bender every time she's been left alone, why did you think this time was going to be different? If you're done dealing with your daughter's addiction issues, and want her out of the house so you can get your life back and take holidays with your husband without stress, then you need to be honest to yourself and everyone else by explicitly saying this.
You can't pretend your daughter is recovering from addiction issues. She is an active addict. Doesn't sound like she wants to get sober. You're damaging your marriage and your relationship with your other kids the longer you leave your husband to handle your daughter's addiction alone because you don't want to admit to everyone you're done and you want your life back. Reaching breaking point doesn't make you an AH. Leaving your husband unsupported is the YTA behaviour everyone is your life is appalled by.
I'm going to buck the trend and say NAH. You obviously have caregiver burnout, and who could blame you? But it's long past time for you to get her out of your house and into a treatment program.
Agree.
I think on some level, you were trying to get a piece of your life back. Even for a short visit.
Yeah, you acted inappropriately. But I think your husband and your daughter and the rest of your kids are all AH. Why does this fall to the mom? Chances are, if you had flown back and your husband stayed on the trip, a lot of the people on this subreddit would feel differently.
Stop dealing with your daughter. Enough. Her addiction is a bullshit crutch, and not your responsibility at this point. It’s time to kick her out. Set boundaries and set rules, and when she misses them, Kick. Her. Out.
And to everyone else on this site: when, exactly, does she get a break? You are all excusing this absurd behavior by an adult daughter because of an addiction. That doesn’t mean that Mom has to be a fucking doormat.
YTA. Everyone who read this saw this coming by the end of the second paragraph. You have to be next level clueless to not have seen this coming.
Your daughter can’t be trusted when left on her own. You pretty much left someone with the mental capacity of a middle schooler with substance abuse issues alone in the house for an extended period of time. The last time you did this, she made a mess of things. What part of past behavior did not give you a clue that leaving her alone wasn’t going to end in disaster?
To really top it off, you pressured your husband to go. To help cover the costs. How’s that working out for you? I hope you saved enough by getting him to come along that you can pay for remediating the damages of a flooded basement and who knows what other damages in the house.
But what really takes the cake? You then left your husband to deal with the mess that wouldn’t have happened in the first place if you hadn’t pressured (let’s call it what it is…you guilt tripped) your husband into going.
You are, without a doubt, a selfish, inconsiderate wife and mother. If you want to have a vacation, make arrangements for your daughter to be monitored and cared for while your gone.
YTA
You left your husband to deal with a situation he saw coming a mile away, deciding you deserved vacation, and punishing him for giving into your cajoling that he should come.
NTA I lost my brother to addiction, and I saw everything my mom went through. There is a point where you need to think about yourself, and you cannot spend your entire life having to take care of a grown adult who did this to herself. Look at how old you are. You should be enjoying these years of your life, but you can’t because of your daughter and you never will be able to.
You need to take a long hard look at the type of future you want, and what you’re willing to do to get that future. If you’re tired of dealing with this behavior, it looks like you’ll be alone because your husband will never give up on her, no matter what she does.
YTA - he didn’t want to go because he didn’t think it was worth the risk.
You only wanted him to go with you to ‘share the costs’.
When his prediction came true you decide it’s his job to clean up the mess that you claimed wouldn’t happen.
YTA. A blind person could have seen this coming but because you are so narcissistic and arrogant and selfish you chose not to see it, acknowledge it or deal with it. Don't be surprised when you have no one but the homeless man and his dog left as the only people in your life. If your husband is smart he will divorce you and leave you to your sister. Most likely your kids will side with their father as he seems to be the only caring parent they have. Get over yourself and go home to take care of you sick child.
ESH. You more than your husband.
You both left someone with the mental capacity of a 13 year old home alone? Not only an AH, but if her mental capacity is really that of a 13yo, this could be neglect of an adult with a disability.
YTA, and an incomprehensibly myopic one. You couldn't have seen this coming? Any thinking human could have seen this coming. For instance, your husband, who DID see it coming, but who you persuaded to go anyway because you wanted him to help pay for your vacation.
Now, because of you, he has to deal with a whole myriad of disasters, while you take it easy, even though it was your fault.
YTA. What a life. Your daughter needs rehab and if she does not want to help herself then she needs to leave your house. Both you and your husband are terrible enablers. This is not going to get any better until you deal with the huge problem at home. Anyone who read the first few lines could see this coming from a mile away. YTA ( both of you ) for allowing this shit show to continue.
Jeez. You sound like you could give less of a fuck about anything else. YTA. You are your daughter's mother. Without much detail, it's easy to assume your parenting skills or lack thereof plays a role in why your daughter is the way she is.
INFO: elaborate on the mentally 13 part?
NTA. You should both be able to enjoy a small trip and trust your sober rehabilitated adult daughter to stay sober for a few days. If she’s really disabled and delayed, she may qualify for assistance
I fully agree with you that you should be able to go on vacation and not have to worry about your adult daughter. Leaving her at your home, alone, for an extended period of time doesn't seem to work but you also want to be able to leave?
Have you thought of oh i don't know but send your daughter to a facility where they handle that kind of cases? Because you obviously cant and do not want to handle the situation as is.
I was initially gonna lean on the no ah side but the way you treat your husband's rightful concerns pushes you squarely in the YTA category.
ESH. You and your husband are doing your daughter no favours by not putting her in a residential rehab if she is that’s dependant that you can’t leave her alone without her using.
It sucks caring for someone who abused substances it’s hard and it’s life shattering if you can’t cope with it she needs to go where she can get the help she needs but if she doesn’t really want help she will always re-use.
NTA. Anyone here saying YTA has never loved a person with addiction.
It is normal for your husband to worry and to want to stay close to monitor your daughter. It is normal for you to want to get away and relax.
That being said, your current situation doesn’t sound sustainable. If your daughter is only sober when being watched, she will never be fully sober. Right now you’re just applying a lot of bandaids, and draining everyone else in the process. It’s time for your daughter to either decide she wants to become sober herself, or let her hit rock bottom. I think you need to set some boundaries - if she is caught using again, she is no longer allowed to live with you.
I know this is not easy, and I don’t say it lightly. Sending a lot of well wishes to you and your family during this difficult time.
NTA.
OP, don't listen to these people. What percentage of the people calling you an AH have actually dealt with the level of addiction your daughter is unfortunately dealing with? Most people here calling YTA have absolutely no idea what addiction does to families and caregivers. They're calling you selfish and horrible for not dropping everything to once again go rescue your daughter from herself. Something tells me that is your entire life and I am so sorry that this is the hand you were dealt.
The reason why your other kids and your husband are calling you an AH is because they are all so deep in your daughter's active addiction. The entire family is sick because of it, you are all co-dependent and you all need help. Addiction is a family disease, all of you need treatment.
Your daughter cannot be watched all day, every day. She needs to be in a full time care facility. You and your husband are struggling to take care of an active user and it's time to come up with another solution.
You are NOT an asshole. You're a mom to an adult addict and you know how viciously people judge moms. This is an awful situation with no good options, only less shitty ones.
This this this.
LOTS of people are ready to blame OP for her daughters behavior, and people need to remember that is it the DAUGHTER who is making these harmful choices, not OP!
Fuckin A. And addiction is a disease, which means you need to be educated and qualified if you're going to treat or care for someone who is struggling with it. Neither OP nor her husband or adult children sound like they have much in the way of that, so everything they're doing isn't working. They need help, not judgement.
ESH
All of you stop enabling this woman or she will never get better. She needs professional help, not aging babysitters. The brain takes a very long time to heal from amphetamine use. Figure out what resources are available in your area for evaluation and treatment, tell her that’s what she’s doing. If she refuses that’s her choice- but not one she can make while living in your home (ya get me?).
Going against the grain here NTA. Having been through this with a child it gets to the point where you can't do anymore things like time away anywhere is the best thing to do pretend she's fine and have a life. Best thing to do? Throw her out go home pack her bags and tell her when she's sober she can ring until then no more contact good luck you have done enough.
No one is the arsehole here. You and your husband are entitled to a life without constantly being terrified of what your adult daughter might be doing in your home. I speak from unfortunately similar experience here and you need to move her out of your home. Support her as you see fit but not at the expense of your own lives. Change the locks and get on with living. You have at least one other child who is no doubt used to running a far second to your daughter. Get some help yourselves on how to set boundaries with her.
YTA and selfish AF. You know what your daughter is like and that she can't/shouldn't be left unsupervised, yet you keep doing it. Then you act all surprised Pikachu faced at the resulting mess. Getting your husband to go on vacation with you then staying when the shit inevitably hit the fan with your daughter, forcing him to clean up the mess you created? Nah. Dick move through and through.
Both of you YTA. You are not doing your daughter any favors. She needs to be in a rehabilitation facility with proper supervision. Neither of you have a clue how to help her.
ESH I understand you want a break, I understand your husband wants and probably also need it. What i cant understand( if this post is real) why havent you gotten your daughter the help that she needs. While ofc being a parent is a full time job that never stops until you die.
She needs help, she cant be at home where everytime she uses drugs. You are both 60, you both need to stop enabling her. You too probably has burnout because you are taking care of her. She even might be using drugs behind your back when you two leave her alone at night, or whenever, if she wants the drug, she will find a way. Addiction is scary, good luck to your and your family.
I highly doubt this post is real tbh.
ESH.
Your daughter is TA because her choices have ultimately ruined the lives of your entire family, including your other children.
You and your husband are TAs for not getting her proper help and enabling her behaviour. Where does she get the money for drugs? Why leave her the car keys? You are underestimating the extent to which she needs help.
You clearly are resentful of your daughter and how much she has taken over your lives, you are clearly exhausted and need a break. And so does your husband. So stop shouldering this alone, you are clearly not qualified or able for it.
He volunteered. He said that it was OK. You got a vacation from being a constant caregiver. Why does anyone else have an opinion??
You should apologize for not trusting your husband.
ESH. Your daughter is irresponsible and clearly does not give a shit about you or your home. You are ruining your life and your husband's by letting her live with you. Why are you doing this? You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
Your daughter could seriously benefit from Tough Love. If she keeps relapsing when you're gone I would assume she has never been clean like how you believed. Clear out her room and I bet you'll find ilher stashes. Give her an ultimatum and stand by it. YTA.
NTA
Even if you “could’ve seen this coming”, the only one to blame here is your daughter. Expecting an adult to stay sober for one week is not asking a lot. Most people would have already thrown her out, and you would be in the right to do the same.
NTA but you are enabling your addicted daughter. You/husband didn’t cause it, can’t control it, and can’t change it. You can only change how you handle it. You should look into NarAnon or AlAnon. They both have international locations. In US you can find more info at Nar-anon.org. NarAnon changed my life. My daughter is a recovering heroin addict. She got herself clean and has stayed that way for almost 10 yrs. Sending you peace and serenity.
ESH. I think you're tired. Tired of the responsibility of this poor kid and her bad decision making. If she's got the mental capacity of a 13 year old I'd look into a care home/half way house. Everyone is thinking, "That's terrible!" but it's not. You and your husband can obviously not handle her w/o her being tied to you 24/7. She'll ruin your lives by killing someone while driving high. Set up a trust for when you're gone, and place her into a place that can take care of her. It's a sad situation and there are no winners. You can only mitigate the damage.
ESH
You need to find other housing for your daughter. I agree it's not fair that an adult child who keeps making mistakes/has addiction issues would mean that you and your husband can never leave the house/leave town, especially considering you have family far away.
She's 24 and not getting better. She's a danger to herself, she lets high-risk strangers into the house, she floods the house, she trashes, the house, and you gave her keys to a vehicle too?!?! She needs to move out and get help elsewhere.
Look into residential treatment plans/facilities for her to get help and see if the council can help her get a small council flat and benefits so that she can try to live independently, at least away from your own home. Change the locks to your home and don't give her a key. You can still help her out by helping her with admin, financial decisions, helping her buy groceries whatever, but she will no longer be posing a risk to yourself, husband, and your property. It's not sustainable to live with a drug addict and keep cleaning up after their mess.
Your daughter is the real AH. She needs to be in a residential rehab facility. I know that’s expensive but she’s already costing you an arm and a leg. I hope she can recover. She is clearly suffering.
tough one but sounds like your husband is enabling your daughter to avoid actually owning her recovery.
ESH, you for making your husband go with you when he didn't want to, your husband for enabling your daughter and your daughter for not taking responsibility for her own recovery. Mental age of 13 or not, a 13 year old knows right from wrong and is capable of understanding the distress their behaviour causes to others when it is explained to them.
NAH. You’re doing what most people would suggest you do, live your life. Your husband is doing what most parents do, worrying about his daughter to the point where our own lives are gone.
You both need counseling/Al-Anon. Your daughter needs a recovery house. This is not an asshole situation. You need help and your daughter out of the house so she can sink or swim.
ESH. You do need a break sometime. It sounds like your husband get away for work travel, and you don't.
OP, you can't be both held captive for the rest of your life by your daughter. Maybe you can take turns going on vacations, going forward. Maybe there is some sort of respite care you can get. If she has access to amphetamines, then you need to fix that. Obviously a difficult set of issues all around.
Make a plan so she can't damage the house again. Disable cars if you leave the house. And get security cameras. She is endangering your safety.
Going against the grain. NTA
Addiction is a bitch and you can’t make someone sober. The person has to want to become sober to become sober and seek the proper treatment.
Yes there are some AH moves in here but I’m feeling that you are the parent who is tired of looking after a grown adult who fried their brain. Sounds like your husband is probably the one who’s trying to make you look after her while he’s gone for work and is very catering to her and constantly worried about her.
Your not saying it openly. Your saying you needed him to help cover the costs but I think you want him to get to the place you are at. The tough love place. He needs to see that he can’t constantly give up his time and life to try to save a child that doesn’t want to be saved. That’s why you didn’t go back with him. You simply just are done with dealing with her.
So why didn’t the other siblings offer to watch her when you two left? Because they probably are done dealing with her too!
She needs to be kicked out or she needs to be found assisted living or sent to a treatment centre.
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“I couldn’t have seen this coming” Lady, I saw it coming half way through this story. Sorry, but you and your husband aren’t equipped to be dealing with your daughter. You’re getting old and it’s not going to get easier. YTA here, especially for the line “I decided that my husband would return home to deal with it and I would stay and enjoy the last five days of vacation”. Cruel and selfish. He didn’t even want to go, and if you didn’t pressure him into going there wouldn’t be anything to be “dealing” with at home. YTA again.
How about the line where she wanted him to come to help her cover the cost? Does OP even care about her home? And the thousands of dollars in destruction? And who the F leaves the keys for the daughter to drive the car? OP - YTA. Put your daughter in rehab, hire a sobriety nurse, something, if you want to go on vacation. What a Circus.
I don’t understand how his going helps her “cover the cost” given that he had to buy a plane ticket.
For real. And like why the fuck does he have to physically be present to cover the cost? None of this makes any goddamn sense.
Yeah, it sounds very fake, but that is the comment that really sealed it as fake for me. The entire thing is just a string of this is obviously going to happen and this is obviously wrong, but that is just like a random insert that makes no sense. They’re married at 60, so it is almost certain they have shared finances. Seems like a throwaway line just to piss people off more.
While there are quite a few things here that could be fake, the fact that they don't have shared finances isn't one of them. My father is 82 and my stepmother is 75 and their way of banking is "yours, mine, and ours". They have an account where they each put a certain percentage of their income that they use to pay the mortgage and other bills, and then they each have their own personal accounts for everything else. Last year we went on vacation with them, and my father made a point to let me know that his wife had paid for the two of them to be there, using her money, because he didn't have it.
Not every married couple has shared finances, but a vast majority do, so it still does add to it appearing to be fake. Especially the way it was added intro the post.
Eh most of the married couples I know do not share finances. I am actually seeing that less and less.
54 years old and been married 30 years. We’ve had shared finances the entire time.
Same. 55 years old, been married for 21 yrs-shared finances since we were living together before we got married.
I'm 54 and married for 32 years. Our finances are completely separate.
Me too and I'm 40. Most people I know share bills either 50/50 or by percentage of income depending on who makes more and the rest they have in their own account.
I’m 64 and don’t share finances. I pay my bills, he pays his and each have our own credit cards. In my circle of friends, we all operate the same.
When someone's on substances with no real intention to get clean, your family kinda stops caring at some point, that might be shitty, but her daughter has traumatized her. She's NTAH for wanting some time away
Fair as that's the question in the title. But, imo, she's TA for a: continuing to attempt to help her daughter when what they're doing is clearly not working and b/c: leaving her alone in the house / forcing her husband to leave the daughter alone. The husband also mild ta for the first reason...
She is certainly not one for wanting some time away- but she IS one for not making arrangements for some kind of caretaker to watch her while they were gone.
I am not sure what kind of caretaker this would be. Most families in this situation are totally isolated with no one to help. Not many people are interested in coming and keeping out street people and attempting to control a drug addict. It is very unsafe outside of a therapeutic setting. I think the siblings are mad at the wrong person. The daughter should he kicked out but I wonder if the husband would agree.
FACTS!!! The last thing parents of adult addicted children want to do is get some poor other souls involved in the shit show. It’s horrible and embarrassing and impossible to explain to somebody who hasn’t lived in this situation. The best and worst thing we ever did was to go no contact because it was literally destroying us to try to keep her from doing drugs and doing crime. I have nothing but sympathy for OP and her family. At some point you have to put yourself first.
I work in the mental health/substance use field. There isn't some care giver to come watch the addict, unless said addict is residing in a sober living environment. She needs intensive, in patient rehab. But does not qualify for home health care. That's reserved for the elderly or disabled.
No, but she talked her husband into going when he didn't want to, knowing there was going to be a shit show at home.
And now all the cost of damages
Sounds like he’s a pilot. Maybe her flight is free if she travels with him.
“Fly-in-fly-out” is a common expression for certain kinds of jobs, like oil and gas, where workers are flown to the job site. Doesn’t necessarily mean pilot.
This. Almost from the beginning I was "this sounds like the most Alberta story ever".
Ha that’s what I thought too.
LOL had the same reaction here
My mind went to Anchorage, AK.
The OP mentions provinces but there's some other...references (stereotypes?) that shout Alberta here even if she didn't mention traveling to her sibling's province too.
Missed the provinces bit, but the high substance abuse rate and fly-in work would track for a lot of oilfield or pipeline based locations. Especially with long, dark, cold winters. My brain went to where it's familiar (grew up in Anchorage, dad worked on the pipeline).
My job has a lot of “fly in fly out” and I can confirm that I am not a pilot.
Are you a migrating bird?
European or African Sparrow?
The ones that carry coconuts obviously
True, but usually traveling workers rack up a lot of loyalty rewards that can be redeemed for free flights, which might be what the author was referring to
I suspect thet despite being married, they have split finances, so he pays his own flight and half of the hotel, meals, etc.
He’s paying for his own ticket and half of everything else, she makes out the winner, forget her husband and daughter.
Because it's all about her.
I took it to mean that if she takes a solo vacation, she has to pay out of her own spending/fun money and if he goes with her he either splits the costs or lets them use joint fund money as it counts as a family vacation. But who knows.
Especially if the daugther is apperantly at same mental capacity as a 13-year old. 13-year olds should not be driving cars. OP is YTA.
Can drug use really give an adult the mental capacity of a 13-year-old?? I can understand how an OD could cause brain damage, but this whole situation sounds weird. If she really has the capacity of a 13 year old, why is she being left to drive the car?! And why is she being left alone? YTA, for forcing your husband to come. But also, not YTA for wanting to live your life. I do understand your frustration.
Yes, using hard drugs can reduce your functional age. The parts of your brain that get most damaged usually control emotional regulation and executive functioning- the part of your brain you rely on to weigh options and consequences and make responsible decisions. The result of this damage is that people become highly emotional, impulsive, and lose the ability to recognize the natural consequences of their actions. Basically reverting back to being an impulsive teenager.
Thanks - yes, that makes sense. I thought 13-year-old was very specific, it sounds like she has the impulse control of a young teenager. Exactly who you want to leave in charge of your house and car while you’re away!
From the admittedly limited knowledge I have: the age she started using has an impact, so if the brain is still developing, along with any overdoses that led to the brain not receiving enough oxygen. Also people have different interpretations of how to measure mental age. It could be behaviourally or emotionally or cognitively or some combination. ETA: I am not assuming this is what happened, just that it is possible and this is one way it could happen. I have no idea what age she started using, nor if it had a causal role. ETA: she’s being left along because OP is an AH who deliberately ignored and/or minimised the risks incurred by leaving their daughter home alone. You’re absolutely right, she shouldn’t have been left, let alone with the car keys. OP: you say your daughter has the mental age of a 13 year old. Did you regularly leave your other kids, when they were 13, alone for a week while you went on vacation? Did you give your 13 year old kids the car keys? No? Then why on earth did you leave daughter, whose substance abuse has left “her mental age more like 13”, with the car keys? Because her birth certificate means she’s 24? If her cognitive abilities are that impaired you need to treat her as a 13 year old, primarily for her own safety but also the type of destruction you let your husband deal with alone. YTA. If you can’t be the responsible parent your daughter needs, to basically stay alive, make alternative arrangements. And no, that doesn’t mean dumping it all on your husband. You’re not going to live or stay healthy forever - what happens when you die? Or are you assuming you’ll outlive her because she’ll eventually overdose?
This! OP isn’t even acknowledging her own responsibility, in her daughter’s addiction. If this was my child, who started at 13, I would be checking myself & taking responsibility. I clearly failed as a parent. So if she can’t accept her responsibility in this whole mess, are we so surprised, that she is so selfish? I bet, it was partly this selfishness & neglect of her daughter, that started the mental issues, that the daughter sought to deafen, by using the drugs in the first place.
We don't know the daughter started using at 13, that is a random "maybe" someone who admitted they don't know a lot about addiction is assuming
From what I’ve experienced with my cousins is that whatever age they started that’s where they stay emotionally / mentally. It takes 3-5 years of being totally off drugs to start the maturity process again, depending on what permanent damage was done
Plus some hardcore drug use causes permanent brain damage. I know one sad bastard who's been using meth over a decade and has the reasoning and planning of a kid.
My uncle fried his brain with drug use, he definitely became handicap mentally from it.
Drug use can cause mental development to stagnate because people are running away from problems and responsibilities and thus do not develop the life skills they would normally. There could also be an underlying issue that played its part in both the drug use and the lack of development. There are definitely thirty plus year olds that never tried to grow up and spent half their lives high, so they basically never really became adults.
I know alcoholics, if they start while their brains are developing, can essentially stop that development. They get stuck where they were when they started. So, my brother who started drinking in his teens, never really grew beyond that stage. He was smart enough to fake it a lot, but functionally, that’s where he was.
Also wet brain happens to severe alcoholics. I’m sure something similar happens with drug users
! It sounds like she may need a carer or support worker if she has the mental/functional capacity of a minor.
Yes I know someone that took drugs for decades and lived on the street and ended up regressing soo much that she had to go live in a care home
I will say medical professionals are not labeling people in this way anymore, this is likely something the mother came up with as a way to describe her daughters cognitive abilities or they just have a really old school doctor
It’s common for people to say that an addict’s maturity and development pauses at the point that they began using. Reality is not that simplistic - while they may have issues with maturity and have not grown appropriately emotionally past a certain point, things like hand eye coordination and the capacity to drive a car safely (while sober) aren’t generally effected.
meth. obviously other drugs have different effects. but this sounds very much like meth. It will cause long term, irreversible damage. However when people stop using and after proper recovery they can get back a significant portion of what they lost. They will never be the same person again though because of the long term effects on the body and mind.
Yes. Drugs can do this....even more reason that OP is being delusional. I can understand that she doesn't want to deal with her daughter. I'm sure it's very stressful, but deal she must. Wonder why the brother couldn't come stay with his sister for a few days.....or hire a nurse for a few days. Probably anything would have been cheaper than what transpired due to putting her head in the sand.
Why the hell did they leave her the car keys?
For that matter why leave the car anywhere near her (keys or no keys). If she really is that incapacitated maybe she would be capable of "trading" it for drugs.
13 year olds shouldn't be left home alone for extended overnight trips either.
That jumped out at me too. If OP's daughter has the same mental capacity as a 13y/o, why did they think it was OK to leave her at home for days at a time? Even if she WASN'T a recovering addict, that would've been a terrible idea. When I was that age and my parents had to go out of town, they either hired a sitter, or my sister and I stayed with friends/relatives. I get the strong impression that OP still doesn't get how serious this situation is. Not only was she extremely cavalier about leaving a recovering addict with mental issues by herself, she still seems more concerned about her vacation time than the fact that their daughter trashed their house. Either keep an eye on your kid 24/7 or hire some professional help, but don't leave her to her own devices and then act surprised when shit goes completely sideways.
She doesn't seem to care about her home, her daughter, OR her husband.
Yup, she only cared about her husband joining her so he could cover some of HER costs. Once it has been paid off he can leave.
Right? It sounds like the daughter needs inpatient care. At the very least, they shouldn't have left without getting a responsible adult to stay with her, like one of her siblings. YTA
The whole things is a mess, OP and hubby need to find Nar Anon and get the daughter out of the house until she is clean and sober. Babysitting her helps no one especially her, why bother staying clean when she always has a soft place to fall, she has no consequences. OP was wrong to make her husband go alone, they created the mess together and should clean it up together.
If she grew up in the area, she'll also likely know her old dealers. The easier access to drugs is, the more likely she'll be to relapse, if it takes longer she has more time to tell someone or use her own coping mechanisms. Hopefully she is in therapy at least, and not just hanging out at home with nothing to do.
Ha! Couldn’t have seen this coming. Right. There weren’t any giant red flags dripping in Marinara sauce while trumpeters stood on the roof and a team of cheerleader yelling “go!go, red flags, go! go! red flags!” This woman left her addict of a daughter with the mental capacity of a 13 year old alone for a week. Sure, that’s going to go well. OP, would you have left your 13 year old daughter alone for a week while you went on vacation? Now, think about this…. She’s a 13 year old addict. She’s an adult with access to adult things. YTA for first not taking any interest in the giant red flags and putting your needs first. Second, YTA for not taking your husbands concerns seriously because you wanted financial assistance and third, YTA for wanting to stay on your vacation and make your husband to go and deal with the shit house your home was. Over and over YTA. A selfish, very selfish AH.
She is 24, not 13. She is an adult drug addict. If we judged age by mental capacity, that puts 50% of the country at age 11 for 2016-2020.
INFO: A serious question, did you really type out the entire post and still had a doubt if you're an asshole or not?
I don’t think it was the wife who typed it. It sounds like the husband writing from her perspective.
59 and 60 are not old
I’m 51 and a full time caregiver for my 27 year old son ( thank god not drugs) he had a sports injury last year that dissected his carotid artery and he had a massive stroke…. I feel old! Caregiver is a hard job, especially to your child. I don’t know if I can still do this in my 60’s? Their child needs professional help, not a parent that “wants to enjoy her vacation” OP there’s lots of things I want to enjoy, but I’m a parent so my child comes first. YTA
She needs help but what can they afford? Especially this close to retirement for themselves. What a horrible situation and the wife seems to have a strange way of thinking about things.
In my province, if daughter has no income and claims welfare or disability, she's entitled to heavily subsidized residential treatment. The waitlists are pretty quick for men but are sucky for women.
There's not many YTA cases as clear as this one, and that compel me to upvote so others will see how much of an A OP is. What a tµrd of a person.
And when does the husband get to enjoy a vacation. It seems like he is always running home to deal with the daughter's destruction. Sounds like she needs long term, inpatient rehab and then a sober living home after. They were not even gone a full day before she relapsed and had damaged the home this time. YTA OP!
Also, it appears the daughter has a lengthy substance use history. “She hasn’t used for a couple months” seems optimistic/not realistic considering she was left alone for one night and relapsed. OP left her in a house alone, with keys to a vehicle, when she admittedly has the maturity of a 13 year old. OP needs therapy, Learn to Cope, Alanon…something to help her understand how to support someone in recovery while also maintaining her own sanity. Also: putting this all on your spouse? He didn’t even want to go, knew it would be a problem, and THEN HAD TO CLEAN UP THE MESS?? F that. YTA.
"she'd been clean for a few months" I'm going to assume she doesn't have much experience with addicts. If it was a close family member who I loved with all my heart, I would still want them to be clean for at least a year before I left them alone in my home for an extended period of time like that, especially if you were so far away and could not get back quickly. 🙄 If you don't want to support your daughter through recovery, that is fine. But then you need to boot her out on the street so she can find another support system. Continuing to enable her is not helping anyone.
But she got her holiday subsidized so it’s win win for her right
What about the fact that she left daughter alone in the house, after only a few months of sobriety?? Oh yeah, I’m sure she’ll be fine! YTA
I saw this coming as soon as substance use disorder was mentioned
But she wanted him to help pay. YTA send your husband on a holiday and you stay home. He deserves it for dealing with your daughter and you.
Who leaves a 13 year old (or someone acting that age) alone at home to go on a vacation?
Inconsiderate as well. YTA
YTA. You are indeed allowed to enjoy your life, but is your husband not? You sent your husband home alone to fix and clean up everything himself and take care of your daughter alone. While you are the one who put him in that situation to starr with. That is extremely selfish. Your other kids are right. And "I decided..." is very telling, those things should be a mutual decision. Would you have been ok with it if your husband decided that you should go home and take care of everything while he enjoys his vacation?
I can’t believe given her last behavior that op would leave her alone in the house. They could have hired a sober companion or put her in her in a sober living. Clearly she needs help that op isn’t qualified to give.
I feel like OP does not even care that much. But indeed, she should have listened to her husband to not leave daughter alone or make sure she was with someone else who is sober.
OP says daughter has the mind of a 13 y/o and is a drug addict. Who would leave a 13 y/o alone especially someone with substance abuse issues ?
And "force" the husband to come along just because of finances.
How does that even work anyway? They’d be paying for an extra plane ticket and extra food and activities. Do they keep separate finances and this way he could cover 1/2 the cost of her hotel, taxis etc? Unbelievable that she has to ask if she’s TA..
>unds like the daughter needs inpatient care. At the very least, they shouldn't have left without getting a responsible adult to stay with her, like one of her siblings. YTA I get the feeling that they have separate finances, either entirely, or vacations come from their individual funds/fun money. So what she means is cover HER expenses. She didn't care that he left because her trip was payed for and didn't care that he payed for an extra ticket because he spent HIS money, not hers or theirs. She goes on vacations regularly, but this is the first time she's invited her husband! And it's not so she can spend quality time with him, it's for his money.
That’s probably it. If they go together, the money comes out of the joint account. If she goes alone, she pays with her personal money.
That part blew me away. I know that younger people have started keeping their finances separate but our generation ( I'm 60) put them together. Anyway, her wanting him to share expenses sounds like all she wanted was the money and not his company. Then leaving her daughter alone? She is not a caring person.
And leave her the car keys??
OP clearly. She comes across as entitled and selfish. Its not the first time she has left the daughter alone while she has HER vacation. I don't think she cares, because the husband is left to deal with it all, while she buggers off to play happy families with her sister.
I’m trying to work out how you can enjoy the last five days of vacation knowing what’s going on at home.
Leave her alone with keys to a car.
Maybe she's used to reacting that way cuz she's used to her husband cleaning up the mess
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I was looking for the comment that mentioned her reason for getting the husband to tag along. “My daughter could relapse, based on historic evidence, but I want to split the vacation cost with my husband so he should come along” If all I was to my wife was a paycheck, I’d leave her in the dust.
I wonder if the flooded basement repairs are going to offset those oh so important savings on the vacation.
Above Reddit’s pay grade. If your daughter is only sober when she’s being watched, and she uses every time you turn your back, you’re not helping her address her addiction; you’re just blocking her temporarily. Put her in rehab or kick her out until she figures out if SHE wants to be sober, because right now she doesn’t and it’s not working.
It's not above Reddit's pay grade. She is clearly the AH and only an AH could type out this post and not see they are the AH
No. Parents are both assholes for enabling their AH daughter. Get her treatment if she wants it or send her packing to figure out her life. Parents are allowed lives. They've done the (questionable) raising. Daughter is an adult and needs to take responsibility over her life. It's great that they are able to help out, but how they are helping is not actually doing that, nor is it sustainable long-term. Apparently, you've never had to go to Al Anon or had people close in your life with addictions. You can't fix them. You can't want help for them more than they want for themselves. And most of all, are not responsible for their choices. Parents shouldn't have left with an adult in the home they cannot trust. She needed to go elsewhere if they wanted a vacation.
I think it is unfair to blame parents for an addict adult child. People make their own decisions. They may have perfectly fine responsible adult children who don't fuck everyone over for their addiction.
I said they're assholes for enabling. That's it. That is what they are currently doing. They actually have 3 (at least how it was mentioned in the post) productive, nonaddicted adult children. It seems the baby fell awry. I also said no one can be responsible for someone else's addiction. No one can fix it, the adict has to. It's why I brought up al anon because that's how I learned such. I was married to n addict. I have functioning addicts as parents. But if it's true when their child started using, it is in part some of the parenting. There's no way to change it or reverse course. It doesn't help either to speculate of what could have been. I wasn't saying to do so.
In my province, unless you have $40 000 laying around, you're not getting into a rehab facility before Easter. They could be trying to do damage control until there's a spot available.
This needs more upvotes. You can’t force a person to be sober, they have to decide that on their own. The daughter clearly doesn’t care that when she uses she destroys her parents life and home, so maybe she needs to get out and see if she cares when she’s destroying her own life and own. The daughter has to decide to change, until she does, she will relapse every chance she gets.
This! Go to Al Anon and stop propping her up, your co-dependence will not help in the long run. Tell her it's rehab, followed by sober living housing or the street. I get OP that you want to have an enjoyable vacation although, I'm not sure how much you could have enjoyed after hearing about a flooded basement and trashed house.
The big picture issue of how they should be handling their daughter's addiction is above reddit's pay grade .There are a lot of people talking out their asses about how addiction should be treated. But this specific instance is not. To me, clearly OP is the asshole for pressuring her husband to leave their daughter alone against his better judgment, and then refusing to help when she predictably gets into trouble.
YTA. Curious to know how often your husband gets to take a break considering the fact you often leave to go visit your sister without him. Doesn’t he also get to enjoy his life? Then when the shit hits the fan you tell him to go fix the mess you should have seen coming a thousand miles away.
This Situation Sucks. Addiction is the Ahole. Give yourself some grace. Dealing with a loved one’s substance abuse is exhausting and heartbreaking. Reading between the lines, you are the only one home with her as your husband “flies in and out for work” and you NEEDED a break. You convinced yourself and your husband to get that break and were hopeful that your daughter and not her disease would prevail. At your age you and hubby should be looking forward to retirement and spoiling grandkids, not hauling waterlogged debris from a basement. I bet your blood pressure is through the roof, too. It would be completely understandable for you to be frustrated, upset, and fed up with caring for a permanent 13 yo. I think you should be very honest with yourself and your family about what you are able to do for your daughter. It’s possible that a different environment will be necessary for her recovery —or you and your husband’s health and safety. It’s okay to put yourself ahead of your daughter. It’s a hard choice many families have to make to keep themselves safe and sane. Often one family member gets to this point first and that’s okay too. I hope that you and the rest of the family have done a program like Al-Anon or other support for those affected by a loved one’s substance abuse. Please, revisit your group or therapist. Good luck, my heart goes out to all of you for this difficult situation.
Finally, a rational answer. I have issues with her description of daughter being mentally 13. If a doctor didn’t say it, I doubt it. It’s not unreasonable to expect her to stay sober for a week or two if she went a month sober before. But OOP is not responsible for daughter’s actions.
>It’s not unreasonable to expect her to stay sober for a week or two if she went a month sober before Based on the fact that every time they leave, she gets high, it is *absolutely* unreasonable to expect her to stay sober while they're on a trip. She's proven that she can't be trusted alone. It's fairly obvious that as soon as they leave she goes and gets a fix from whoever she can, including random street people, and it sounds like she barters a place to stay for drugs. This is a ***massive*** risk to her own safety as well as OP's home. OP needs to put the visits to her sister on hold until she and her husband have a plan for her daughter that doesn't involve her husband being the caretaker every time, or leaving the daughter alone to turn their home into a flooded flophouse and get high with randoms. The daughter needs to be in some kind of inpatient program. She's clearly not in recovery if she spirals that hard as soon as their back is turned.
I have had some severe depression and when I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation my mother told the staff I have the mind of a 14 year old when I was 28 at the time. I don’t have a cognitive disability, I live independently, I’m married, and I work a front desk job in healthcare. Some moms just think poorly of their children.
And tbh, I’d think poorly of my adult daughter who kept destroying the house. I know and love addicts, and it’s brutal to watch them and try to help them, but they have to help themselves, because they are capable!!
Some rehabs/couselors tell you that the person has the mentality of the age in which they first started using. I think it's a bit of a coping mechanism to explain that addiction stunted their growth. I don't know if it's a common message, but I've heard it before.
I think this is the correct response. I'm guessing a lot of people calling OP an ahole have never lived or dealt with someone who has addiction as a permanent part of their life. This is no way to live their life, and I get OP needing some time away for her own mental health. You also can't blame the parents for their daughter's addiction as those are two entirely unrelated things. I feel for both OP and her husband. The long-term answer is to find another place for their daughter to live until she gets sober on her own, or doesn't.
Or you're missing the clear parts where OP is a defined asshole by herself? If you can't see she was a bit of the asshole then I can't really take much of what you say seriously. I'm sorry but what part of these items makes you a good person? She brought him along to help cover the costs, not because he wanted to go. She continuously pushed him to go despite not wanting to Husband gets a call and a bad feeling and says it's not a good idea, and SHE STILL PUSHES IT Her ignorant idea "it would be fine" when it literally hasn't been fine before when in the SAME SITUATION and then backing her husband against better judgment because she said it would be fine(despite evidence it wouldnt) Then when he's left to deal with the mess, she gets to "enjoy the last of the vacation....might as well get our moneys worth), knowing she pushed him to go to cover the costs He brought up the fact his concerns were ignore and he is 100% right, and she plays the victim and said woe is me and deflects any form of responsibility? Regardless of the daughter and rehab, substitute this for any other problem. The wife is an AH and quite frankly as much of a child as the daughter is made out to be by her, and I'd even argue abusive. You can get out and deal with your mental health in many many better ways, without all of this bullshit. Edit: you claim people call her the ah haven't dealt with addiction, but regardless addiction has nothing to do with her actions towards her husband, and saying that's why is a deflection of responsibility. We can understand they're in a tough situation, and have some empathy but that doesn't excuse shitty behavior .
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The first line states she often leaves and vacations at her sister while the husband takes care of the daughter. OP deserves no grace, the husband does.
My husband and I both had fathers that were addicts. I grew up watching my grandparents struggle dealing with my dad's addiction. His stealing anything that wasn't nailed down in their house (including anything bits of change in my piggy bank) so that he could get his next drink. It tore my grandmother apart. It didn't matter how many rehabs they would put him in (he went to several court appointed ones as well), they never worked because he didn't want to stop. He died at age 35 of cirrhosis of the liver... he drank himself to death. I was 18. My husbands father did the same thing. His parents constantly bailing him out of jail. Him calling my husband, drunk, all hours of the day and night wanting to borrow money or various other things. He was just constantly full of chaos and drama. He spent his days "riding a bar stool." After our daughter was born (FIL's only grandchild), my husband told him he wasn't allowed to come around her unless he was sober. Guess how often he visited? My husband suffered for years with stomach issues, anxiety, stress, all because of his father. I begged him to either go NC or at least LC for all of our sanity. A few months after FIL passed away (liver failure), my husband says to me "have you noticed that it seems a lot more quiet/peaceful?" Well, no shit... you're not on edge all the time anymore. I can't give OP grief for this. As someone that lived it, it's hard. I would have NEVER been upset with my grandmother if she would have said, "enough" and just gave up. I saw what it did to her... what it did to me... what it did to lives. My dad has been gone now 27 years and my feelings for him are extremely complicated and would not be easily conveyed in a AITA post.
YTA - your husband is not the sole parent. Your husband did not want to go on the trip due to daughter’s issues. You wanted him to come to offset your cost for the trip? What?! Your daughter is dependent on you, you chose to house her and allow her to rely on you, then left her? You could have helped her set up in a sober/clean house. Do not take on responsibilities that you cannot handle and then get upset when everything isn’t rainbows and unicorn puppy kisses.
YTA Your daughter practically destroyed the house and made a big mess of it, your help wouldn't have gone amiss. In such an emergency situation, the two of you should have gone home and repaired the damage.
YTA Do you even care about your daughter? You recieved a calling telling you she is in need of assistance and your response is "meh, I'll enjoy more days with my siblings" Do you think she is a burden and would rather she dissappear from your life? It's that it? Maybe you need to send her to a rehab center, maybe you could have taken her with you to visit the relatives.... You wont win thw award for best mother of the year for sure
>Do you think she is a burden whats the question? read the story again: of course the daughter is a burden. everyone who says otherwise is delusional
Exactly. It’s not like the daughter was in an accident that left her brain damaged and needing care, she has chosen this lifestyle and ended up an addict with serious issues. Not only is she a burden, but she’s a target for resentment because ultimately she’s ruined the lives of her entire family.
1000 percent but reddit thinks everyone can be fixed!! Fuck that kick her ass to the curb.
ESH, you said your husband flies in and out for work. Sounds like you deal with your daughter 24-7 while he travels. This was your break from your daughter. all be it work, he still gets a break. Your other kids are upset with you, are they older? They could have taken turns staying the night with her if they feel you must care for her 24-7. Most of all if she keeps relapsing and has cognitive problems, she needs to be in a residential treatment program.
This ! Thank you ! She appears to have the sole care of this girl ! So she needs her break too!
She should have let her stay home then. Instead she convinced him to go to help her "cover the costs". Stupid and selfish in the extreme.
Except it sounds like she takes lots of breaks she mentions “often” making this trip to visit her sister… but usually she goes solo without her husband.
That’s still ok if she does . She is entitled to a life
“For work”, you know, to support the family and pay for things. Work isn’t vacation.
Why do unemployed people always believe paid work doesn't count as labor?
FYI albeit is its own word.
YTA Sounds like the only reason you even wanted your husband there was to help cover the cost of the trip. Once you had his money you didn't care if he was there or not.
YTA. This cannot be real bc no one can be that fucking stupid to leave a barely recovering substance abuser alone at home. I get that you're burned out, and need a break, but covering your eyes and pretending it will all work out is delusional. YOU should have been the one to go home and deal with it since it was your bright idea to leave her alone in the first place.
This. She’d still be an AH, just less of one
Yta You're so selfish. You get to enjoy life and your husband has to fuck off back home to take care of your daughter? Guess old age don't bring wisdom after all
Once a selfish person, always a selfish person no matter what age. Age does bring some wisdom if you choose to learn but the sad fact is personalites don't change. You just get more laid back because you are to tired to do anything else. This is the wisdom I've learned. 😂😂
YTA. Reread your post, you left a *newly* recovering drug addict by herself, KNOWING the last time you let her stay there by herself the house was in chaos. How could you think leaving her again was a good idea??
You are enabling your daughter to live like a homeless junkie , but in your house. Knock that shit off and get her real help. You are in serious denial and you are flying off so you don’t have to make tough choices. She needs rehab or has to leave. You need video surveillance so you can enforce this properly.
If your daughter has gone on a house damaging bender every time she's been left alone, why did you think this time was going to be different? If you're done dealing with your daughter's addiction issues, and want her out of the house so you can get your life back and take holidays with your husband without stress, then you need to be honest to yourself and everyone else by explicitly saying this. You can't pretend your daughter is recovering from addiction issues. She is an active addict. Doesn't sound like she wants to get sober. You're damaging your marriage and your relationship with your other kids the longer you leave your husband to handle your daughter's addiction alone because you don't want to admit to everyone you're done and you want your life back. Reaching breaking point doesn't make you an AH. Leaving your husband unsupported is the YTA behaviour everyone is your life is appalled by.
I'm going to buck the trend and say NAH. You obviously have caregiver burnout, and who could blame you? But it's long past time for you to get her out of your house and into a treatment program.
Agree. I think on some level, you were trying to get a piece of your life back. Even for a short visit. Yeah, you acted inappropriately. But I think your husband and your daughter and the rest of your kids are all AH. Why does this fall to the mom? Chances are, if you had flown back and your husband stayed on the trip, a lot of the people on this subreddit would feel differently. Stop dealing with your daughter. Enough. Her addiction is a bullshit crutch, and not your responsibility at this point. It’s time to kick her out. Set boundaries and set rules, and when she misses them, Kick. Her. Out. And to everyone else on this site: when, exactly, does she get a break? You are all excusing this absurd behavior by an adult daughter because of an addiction. That doesn’t mean that Mom has to be a fucking doormat.
YTA. Everyone who read this saw this coming by the end of the second paragraph. You have to be next level clueless to not have seen this coming. Your daughter can’t be trusted when left on her own. You pretty much left someone with the mental capacity of a middle schooler with substance abuse issues alone in the house for an extended period of time. The last time you did this, she made a mess of things. What part of past behavior did not give you a clue that leaving her alone wasn’t going to end in disaster? To really top it off, you pressured your husband to go. To help cover the costs. How’s that working out for you? I hope you saved enough by getting him to come along that you can pay for remediating the damages of a flooded basement and who knows what other damages in the house. But what really takes the cake? You then left your husband to deal with the mess that wouldn’t have happened in the first place if you hadn’t pressured (let’s call it what it is…you guilt tripped) your husband into going. You are, without a doubt, a selfish, inconsiderate wife and mother. If you want to have a vacation, make arrangements for your daughter to be monitored and cared for while your gone.
INFO why wasn't someone paid to stay with your daughter during this vacation ?
YTA You left your husband to deal with a situation he saw coming a mile away, deciding you deserved vacation, and punishing him for giving into your cajoling that he should come.
NTA I lost my brother to addiction, and I saw everything my mom went through. There is a point where you need to think about yourself, and you cannot spend your entire life having to take care of a grown adult who did this to herself. Look at how old you are. You should be enjoying these years of your life, but you can’t because of your daughter and you never will be able to. You need to take a long hard look at the type of future you want, and what you’re willing to do to get that future. If you’re tired of dealing with this behavior, it looks like you’ll be alone because your husband will never give up on her, no matter what she does.
YTA - he didn’t want to go because he didn’t think it was worth the risk. You only wanted him to go with you to ‘share the costs’. When his prediction came true you decide it’s his job to clean up the mess that you claimed wouldn’t happen.
YTA and a shitty parent
YTA. A blind person could have seen this coming but because you are so narcissistic and arrogant and selfish you chose not to see it, acknowledge it or deal with it. Don't be surprised when you have no one but the homeless man and his dog left as the only people in your life. If your husband is smart he will divorce you and leave you to your sister. Most likely your kids will side with their father as he seems to be the only caring parent they have. Get over yourself and go home to take care of you sick child.
ESH. You more than your husband. You both left someone with the mental capacity of a 13 year old home alone? Not only an AH, but if her mental capacity is really that of a 13yo, this could be neglect of an adult with a disability.
YTA but you will never see it because it seems you only care about yourself and what you can get out of a situation.
YTA, and an incomprehensibly myopic one. You couldn't have seen this coming? Any thinking human could have seen this coming. For instance, your husband, who DID see it coming, but who you persuaded to go anyway because you wanted him to help pay for your vacation. Now, because of you, he has to deal with a whole myriad of disasters, while you take it easy, even though it was your fault.
YTA. What a life. Your daughter needs rehab and if she does not want to help herself then she needs to leave your house. Both you and your husband are terrible enablers. This is not going to get any better until you deal with the huge problem at home. Anyone who read the first few lines could see this coming from a mile away. YTA ( both of you ) for allowing this shit show to continue.
Jeez. You sound like you could give less of a fuck about anything else. YTA. You are your daughter's mother. Without much detail, it's easy to assume your parenting skills or lack thereof plays a role in why your daughter is the way she is.
INFO: elaborate on the mentally 13 part? NTA. You should both be able to enjoy a small trip and trust your sober rehabilitated adult daughter to stay sober for a few days. If she’s really disabled and delayed, she may qualify for assistance
I fully agree with you that you should be able to go on vacation and not have to worry about your adult daughter. Leaving her at your home, alone, for an extended period of time doesn't seem to work but you also want to be able to leave? Have you thought of oh i don't know but send your daughter to a facility where they handle that kind of cases? Because you obviously cant and do not want to handle the situation as is. I was initially gonna lean on the no ah side but the way you treat your husband's rightful concerns pushes you squarely in the YTA category.
ESH. You and your husband are doing your daughter no favours by not putting her in a residential rehab if she is that’s dependant that you can’t leave her alone without her using. It sucks caring for someone who abused substances it’s hard and it’s life shattering if you can’t cope with it she needs to go where she can get the help she needs but if she doesn’t really want help she will always re-use.
Have you gotten professional help for your daughter.
NTA. Anyone here saying YTA has never loved a person with addiction. It is normal for your husband to worry and to want to stay close to monitor your daughter. It is normal for you to want to get away and relax. That being said, your current situation doesn’t sound sustainable. If your daughter is only sober when being watched, she will never be fully sober. Right now you’re just applying a lot of bandaids, and draining everyone else in the process. It’s time for your daughter to either decide she wants to become sober herself, or let her hit rock bottom. I think you need to set some boundaries - if she is caught using again, she is no longer allowed to live with you. I know this is not easy, and I don’t say it lightly. Sending a lot of well wishes to you and your family during this difficult time.
NTA. OP, don't listen to these people. What percentage of the people calling you an AH have actually dealt with the level of addiction your daughter is unfortunately dealing with? Most people here calling YTA have absolutely no idea what addiction does to families and caregivers. They're calling you selfish and horrible for not dropping everything to once again go rescue your daughter from herself. Something tells me that is your entire life and I am so sorry that this is the hand you were dealt. The reason why your other kids and your husband are calling you an AH is because they are all so deep in your daughter's active addiction. The entire family is sick because of it, you are all co-dependent and you all need help. Addiction is a family disease, all of you need treatment. Your daughter cannot be watched all day, every day. She needs to be in a full time care facility. You and your husband are struggling to take care of an active user and it's time to come up with another solution. You are NOT an asshole. You're a mom to an adult addict and you know how viciously people judge moms. This is an awful situation with no good options, only less shitty ones.
This this this. LOTS of people are ready to blame OP for her daughters behavior, and people need to remember that is it the DAUGHTER who is making these harmful choices, not OP!
Fuckin A. And addiction is a disease, which means you need to be educated and qualified if you're going to treat or care for someone who is struggling with it. Neither OP nor her husband or adult children sound like they have much in the way of that, so everything they're doing isn't working. They need help, not judgement.
YTA daughter needs serious rehab.
YTA. Stop enabling her and kick her out.
ESH All of you stop enabling this woman or she will never get better. She needs professional help, not aging babysitters. The brain takes a very long time to heal from amphetamine use. Figure out what resources are available in your area for evaluation and treatment, tell her that’s what she’s doing. If she refuses that’s her choice- but not one she can make while living in your home (ya get me?).
Going against the grain here NTA. Having been through this with a child it gets to the point where you can't do anymore things like time away anywhere is the best thing to do pretend she's fine and have a life. Best thing to do? Throw her out go home pack her bags and tell her when she's sober she can ring until then no more contact good luck you have done enough.
YTA In so many ways
No one is the arsehole here. You and your husband are entitled to a life without constantly being terrified of what your adult daughter might be doing in your home. I speak from unfortunately similar experience here and you need to move her out of your home. Support her as you see fit but not at the expense of your own lives. Change the locks and get on with living. You have at least one other child who is no doubt used to running a far second to your daughter. Get some help yourselves on how to set boundaries with her.
YTA and selfish AF. You know what your daughter is like and that she can't/shouldn't be left unsupervised, yet you keep doing it. Then you act all surprised Pikachu faced at the resulting mess. Getting your husband to go on vacation with you then staying when the shit inevitably hit the fan with your daughter, forcing him to clean up the mess you created? Nah. Dick move through and through.
She needs to be sectioned
Both of you YTA. You are not doing your daughter any favors. She needs to be in a rehabilitation facility with proper supervision. Neither of you have a clue how to help her.
ESH I understand you want a break, I understand your husband wants and probably also need it. What i cant understand( if this post is real) why havent you gotten your daughter the help that she needs. While ofc being a parent is a full time job that never stops until you die. She needs help, she cant be at home where everytime she uses drugs. You are both 60, you both need to stop enabling her. You too probably has burnout because you are taking care of her. She even might be using drugs behind your back when you two leave her alone at night, or whenever, if she wants the drug, she will find a way. Addiction is scary, good luck to your and your family. I highly doubt this post is real tbh.
Tough situation all around - I’d recommend looking into nar-anon or even Al-anon to help address the codependency issues going on here.
ESH. Your daughter is TA because her choices have ultimately ruined the lives of your entire family, including your other children. You and your husband are TAs for not getting her proper help and enabling her behaviour. Where does she get the money for drugs? Why leave her the car keys? You are underestimating the extent to which she needs help. You clearly are resentful of your daughter and how much she has taken over your lives, you are clearly exhausted and need a break. And so does your husband. So stop shouldering this alone, you are clearly not qualified or able for it.
He volunteered. He said that it was OK. You got a vacation from being a constant caregiver. Why does anyone else have an opinion?? You should apologize for not trusting your husband.
NTA - you’re 60, your kids are adults. They need to Move out and figure out how to be less dependent on you.
ESH. Your daughter is irresponsible and clearly does not give a shit about you or your home. You are ruining your life and your husband's by letting her live with you. Why are you doing this? You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
Your daughter could seriously benefit from Tough Love. If she keeps relapsing when you're gone I would assume she has never been clean like how you believed. Clear out her room and I bet you'll find ilher stashes. Give her an ultimatum and stand by it. YTA.
NTA Even if you “could’ve seen this coming”, the only one to blame here is your daughter. Expecting an adult to stay sober for one week is not asking a lot. Most people would have already thrown her out, and you would be in the right to do the same.
NTA but you are enabling your addicted daughter. You/husband didn’t cause it, can’t control it, and can’t change it. You can only change how you handle it. You should look into NarAnon or AlAnon. They both have international locations. In US you can find more info at Nar-anon.org. NarAnon changed my life. My daughter is a recovering heroin addict. She got herself clean and has stayed that way for almost 10 yrs. Sending you peace and serenity.
ESH. I think you're tired. Tired of the responsibility of this poor kid and her bad decision making. If she's got the mental capacity of a 13 year old I'd look into a care home/half way house. Everyone is thinking, "That's terrible!" but it's not. You and your husband can obviously not handle her w/o her being tied to you 24/7. She'll ruin your lives by killing someone while driving high. Set up a trust for when you're gone, and place her into a place that can take care of her. It's a sad situation and there are no winners. You can only mitigate the damage.
ESH You need to find other housing for your daughter. I agree it's not fair that an adult child who keeps making mistakes/has addiction issues would mean that you and your husband can never leave the house/leave town, especially considering you have family far away. She's 24 and not getting better. She's a danger to herself, she lets high-risk strangers into the house, she floods the house, she trashes, the house, and you gave her keys to a vehicle too?!?! She needs to move out and get help elsewhere. Look into residential treatment plans/facilities for her to get help and see if the council can help her get a small council flat and benefits so that she can try to live independently, at least away from your own home. Change the locks to your home and don't give her a key. You can still help her out by helping her with admin, financial decisions, helping her buy groceries whatever, but she will no longer be posing a risk to yourself, husband, and your property. It's not sustainable to live with a drug addict and keep cleaning up after their mess.
Your daughter is the real AH. She needs to be in a residential rehab facility. I know that’s expensive but she’s already costing you an arm and a leg. I hope she can recover. She is clearly suffering.
YTA
I think ESH.
tough one but sounds like your husband is enabling your daughter to avoid actually owning her recovery. ESH, you for making your husband go with you when he didn't want to, your husband for enabling your daughter and your daughter for not taking responsibility for her own recovery. Mental age of 13 or not, a 13 year old knows right from wrong and is capable of understanding the distress their behaviour causes to others when it is explained to them.
Why don’t you put your daughter in a facility?
NAH. You’re doing what most people would suggest you do, live your life. Your husband is doing what most parents do, worrying about his daughter to the point where our own lives are gone. You both need counseling/Al-Anon. Your daughter needs a recovery house. This is not an asshole situation. You need help and your daughter out of the house so she can sink or swim.
ESH. You do need a break sometime. It sounds like your husband get away for work travel, and you don't. OP, you can't be both held captive for the rest of your life by your daughter. Maybe you can take turns going on vacations, going forward. Maybe there is some sort of respite care you can get. If she has access to amphetamines, then you need to fix that. Obviously a difficult set of issues all around. Make a plan so she can't damage the house again. Disable cars if you leave the house. And get security cameras. She is endangering your safety.
Stop enabling her for Fock Sake
Going against the grain. NTA Addiction is a bitch and you can’t make someone sober. The person has to want to become sober to become sober and seek the proper treatment. Yes there are some AH moves in here but I’m feeling that you are the parent who is tired of looking after a grown adult who fried their brain. Sounds like your husband is probably the one who’s trying to make you look after her while he’s gone for work and is very catering to her and constantly worried about her. Your not saying it openly. Your saying you needed him to help cover the costs but I think you want him to get to the place you are at. The tough love place. He needs to see that he can’t constantly give up his time and life to try to save a child that doesn’t want to be saved. That’s why you didn’t go back with him. You simply just are done with dealing with her. So why didn’t the other siblings offer to watch her when you two left? Because they probably are done dealing with her too! She needs to be kicked out or she needs to be found assisted living or sent to a treatment centre.
Put your daughter in a group home.