I'm sorry I haven't had the opportunity to answer before now. I am so sorry you are going through this with your daughter. I have a similar situation with my daughter who is close to the age of your daughter. She is not on meth (that I know of) but has used just about every other kind of drug that there is. This has been going on for over 10 years now. There are times when I have really feared for her life.

I hope and pray that the intervention is helpful to your daughter. I think it is the one of the most horrible things there is to have to watch your child on drugs and not be able to do anything about it. We have tried, we have talked until we are blue in the face, cried, begged, everything. She seems to go through periods where she does drugs and then she will stop for a while, and then start up again. And it's awful. We can hardly stand to have her around like that - her brothers and sisters just feel like smacking her when she is doing drugs, and I do, too.

Her drug of choice is shooting up oxycontins, but if she can't aford that, she will take just about anything. She has (in the past, not recently, thank the Lord) used cocaine, crack, and heroin. I have had 3 other kids experiment with drugs (mostly weed and ecstasy), but not to this extent, and they all stopped after a couple of years by their own decision. Almost all of my daughter's friends have died from drug overdoses, including the father of her only child which she lost to his family because of her drug problem and because of our cult history. Thank the Lord, the guy she has been with for the last two years does not do drugs, and they ususally have a huge blowup when she is using them. It doesn't stop her, though.

I have to honestly say that the ONLY thing that has helped at all have been the times when I was on my face crying to the Lord to spare her life and stop her. (I am very much interested in reading the book you suggested, Woodie.) She has been to court-ordered substance abuse therapy and court-ordered AA/NA groups, but she managed to stay clean while doing that so they never believed she had a problem. But at the worst times, prayer is what got ME through it all, and I know prayer is what has kept her alive. Without drugs, she is one of the most sweet, loving, caring people you would ever want to know. With drugs, her only focus is getting more money to get more drugs.

I have had to go and rescue her so many times from dangerous situations, and one day when she "disappeared" for a couple of days, she came home after having been horrible raped by two men all night long, with bruises all over her body, and she ended up in the ER. That straightened her up for awhile. Right now we are battling her xanax problem. She has a horrible reaction to them, and it drives us completely nuts. We just have to be mean and rude to her to get her to leave us alone when she is abusing xanax, because we can't stand to have her around.

And Meme, you are right. It is so easy to feel so guilty because of things we put our kids through in the past, even though unintentional. And we do have to take the blame for that, which I know you have done, too. But there also comes a point where we have to realize that it's not ALL our fault. Who knows, this same child may have had this same problem no matter what the circumstances of her childhood were. It happens to the best of families. So when guilt and condemnation begin to rear their ugly heads, you have to be able to stand on the promise that God has forgiven you for those mistakes and that your child is making these decisions now as an adult. It isn't easy. But if there is one thing that I absolutely do know, God does care about you and about her. It is not His plan for this to be happening. He has thoughts and plans for you that are GOOD. Jeremiah 29:11 is a wonderful verse to hold on to - "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."