being honest

[raven2uk]

my daughter has started to date someone on methadone and i am not sure what to make of him. my step son has been on methadone for some years and i am fine with it. he need help getting of the heroin so good luck to the lad. but my daughters new fella is really freaking me out. she is 20 and has a 2 and 3 year old. before i found he has always on edge and acting stange. my sons even find him a little weird. the way i found out he was on methadone was, i had been having my grand daughter over night and they had come to pick her back up. both children had climbed into the front of his car and were arguing over a bottle of pop, so i intervened as neither of them attempted to take it off them. when i got it off them it was his bottle of methadone. all i got from him was it's ok it's a new bottle. but it had clearly been open as the bottle was sticky, so rushed the kids in and washed their hands. yes my daughter is guilty as she should have known better. h
they tend avoid me now as i said my peace as no sooner had i give it to them they put it back in the front of the car.

he doesn't seem right at all. on a thursday me and my daughter play on a darts team and i have asked the kids stay with us over night, but he insists he wants them and one night he turned up at 11.00pm with the kids drenched. when asking him why were they like it he said he had been on the park with them. when i asked what time they had been there till, he said he had just left. it was pouring with rain. i was l very angry at the fact the kids are a pawn in all this.

two weeks ago we did get the kids over night so he decided  he wanted to come to darts with us. he realised it wasn't an up beat club just basic but at the end of the
day, its suits us, but he wamted to go. so when my daughter decided to play an extra game he got up and stood in front of the board being aggressive anf unruly. i had to remove him as the game to us is serious. he was just acting like i would expect a 5 year old to act. i asked him not to comea gain but the penny doesn't drop with him. it was just over a a bag of chips. there has been loads of times i can see a side of him i don't like and i just can't work it out. am i just being suspious or have isomething to be concerned about as i really don't know much about methadone and it's affects. i am more familiar with street drugs. no as i lost a friend to them.

[OP8S]

I don't know how you would approach your daughters boyfriend, but could you not sit down some night & ask him about these incidents? He may have mental issues eg bi-polar or something else which is stabilised to a point with his methadone script. I know that it works as a good mood stabiliser for me. I'm very responsible with my meds having 2 kids myself. The only time it comes out the locked cupboard is when i take it, you can't take any risks when it comes to your loved ones. If the meth is covering up an underlying mental issue then there are meds out there which can be taken along with meth that can help. It doesn't really sound to me that you could sit him down & ask him about these things if he is a violent person. Can your daughter shed any light on the subject ? She knows him best. It is certainly not got anything to do with methadone though, maybe he's just a violent person with a short fuse in which case I would hope that your daughter would drift away from him. I hate any kind of abuse in a relationship, best for it to get sorted out sooner than later. Good luck, keep in touch.

[raven2uk]

thanks for that. to me he seems on edge all the time and rocks. almost like he is withdrawing. does alcohol affect methadone use?

[wastedyouth]

methadone and alchohol do not go together, because he is on methadone it will make less alchohol to get him drunk.  I dont think that methadone alone would make him come over strange to other people, as for the rocking and looking like he is withdrawing, he could be detoxing from his methadone or he could be topping up, which would cause him to be in withdrawls, which would make him appear aggressive.  I am a methadone user and it's the user that has to keep it away from any children and it should not be sitting in the front of his car esp when he knows there will be children there, the fact your daughter did not seem conserned would have made me susposious, whether she was frieghtened of him or if it was something else.  Drugs made my ex partner very unpridictable and i would be worried your daughter is getting her and her children into something she would find it hard to get out of.

Hope you and your daughter manage to work things out
Take Care WY

[OP8S]

On edge the whole time, outbursts of violence, erratic behaviour. From where I am sitting it sounds like he's on rocks ( crack cocaine ) most people I have ever known with a crack habit ( myself included, though not for years ) nearly always have to come down with opiates or at the least some kind of tranquilising drug. You can get substitute prescribing for heroin, hence the methadone. But I have never heard of sustitute prescribing of any drug for crack addiction. I don't want to alarm you but if this was the case he is not somebody you want your family around, it will only end in disaster. Crack is a curse, I wouldn't wish that addiction on my worst enemy. I hope that I am wrong raven2UK, you sound pretty close with your daughter, whats her excuse for his behaviour? Could you ask her? Best get to the bottom of it sooner rather than later.
Good Luck.

[mac15]

Dear Raven,forgive me for asking but what does your daughter actually see in this guy,does he treat her well and respect her and her child,does he treat your family with repect and dignity??

By the sound of your post this doesnt seem to be the case and i dare say if you pointed these facts to your daughter she may or may nor rebel against those closet to her,namely you!!

It seems to be that he is still using on top of his methadone but please dont fall into the trap that all Methadone users continue to use on top,as the previous post said if he seems agitated and anxious most of the time it appears that he is "strung out" or in the early stages of withdrawl either from heroin or as said previous "crack".If this guy is using crack the only advice i can maybe offer is have an open ,honest conversation with your daughter because crack will strip him bare and i wouldnt like your daughter to get drawn into that "world".

If he is still using he may well still have a lot of denial around his addiction and if you were all to sit and discuss the issues around this the chances are he would probably deny eveything you had to say.


Also as you had said with the episode re the Methadone bottle and i dont mean to frighten you here but if your grand daughter had managed to even take a sip of Methadone ther is a pretty good chance that she may have died!!

Im sorry that i dont really have anything positive or a light at the end of the tunnell i can see but depending on how serious your daughter is about him i would advice her to run a mile,has this guy got anything constructive in his life like a job,house,car etc,i dont meen that these material things would make things better if he is still using but if he is how is he funding his habit.

One glimmer of hope is that he isnt using but not on a stable dose of methadone and thus why he is feel this agitated anxious way,maybe that is one explanation for his behaviour.
If you feel the need to talk privately send me a personnal message,i may not have the answers but i will certainly be anear and friend for you to bounce questions off of if you dont want to do it on an open forum.

I wish you well and please let us know how you get on because what you will find on the Alliance is people who genuinely care!!

Take Care and Good Luck

Best wishes Stevie

[campanula]

yes, this is an alarming and upsetting situation for you. However, and most importantly to my mind, is the fact of your closeness to your daughter. Ultimately, you may have to support her in her choice of partner, at least as long as she remains unwilling to disengage with her man as you cannot risk her feeling torn between two people who she obviously cares for. I am so sorry you have to feel this anxiety - are you able to have a dialogue with your daughter regarding your fears? I know it is a difficult position especially if you fear for your grandchildren's safety and well-being as well as your daughter. At the moment, you are keeping channels of communication open - essential in a volatile situation where circumstances can change with horrid swiftness. The fact that you are all somewhat straight with each other regarding your SiLs ongoing addiction is a good sign: it gives you all a basis to air your fears and listen to your theirs. Speaking as one whose family relationships have utterly broken down because of secrecy, predjudice and dishonesty, I really wish you well in negotiating what could be a long haul. Communicating, even hatefully, is better than either withdrawing or challenging - your daughter will need your love and support whatever she decides.

[skunkworks]

Sorry fella but as the title of this thread is 'being honest' then i'll be honest.

If anything you just described happened in front of me with any of my daughters and their boyfriends I'd have torn the bastard a new arsehole.

I know you are trying to be diplomatic and that is totally to your credit, and yes I understand violence isn't the answer and it would probably make the situation worse.
But I would still have lamped the fucker.

Good luck, and as others have said this is not something methadone could create or even exacerbate - if someone shows violent tendencies towards your daughter and has callous disregard for the kids safety then  he is a violent asshole who doesn't care for the kids.
4-6 on, if the guy had never even seen drugs in his life he'd be a violent asshole with a complete disregard for the kids safety.
 
Is there no way you can 'have a quiet word' with this douchebag?

[I have 3 daughters myself and I do genuinely wish you the best with this problem]

[wastedyouth]

I think that you have come on here looking for help and advice for you daughter and her children your grandchildren, im going to look at it from a different angle, an angle that i have personnal expierience with domestic violence, and i dont want you to think that your daughter is being beaten up, but one of the first things that a controlling violent man will do is try and cut her off from her support eg. family and friends.  To me the way you have written your post he seems to have quite a bit of control over her
1. by the sounds of it he has made no effort to get to know or get of with you
2. you wanted the kids but he insisted that he wanted them with him(why?)
3. When he wanted to leave the pub, he obviously wanted your daughter to follow
4. They tend to avoid you now(classic move)
5. She made no attempt to get the methadone off her children, would suggest to me that she was frieghtend of what his reaction was going to be.
My advice to you would be force your way into your daughters life wether he likes it or not, it wont be long till they say that if you want to come round could you give them some notice.  Im not saying that he has hit her, he may just be very controlling buteven though you may feel pushed out of her life don't let him do it, then if it does turn into violence, there will be no-one there to notice the change or the marks.  And remember the marks will not be visible, they will normaly at the start anyway be on the arms and body.  I could be completely wrong in my thinking but i never had anyone when i needed help i would hate to see another female go through anything like i did, this is only concern im not trying to frieghten you, and i hope that i havent, i hope that i have just given you something to think about, things to look out for.

Good Luck
Always be there to pick up the pieces and i know you will be or you would not have come onto a forum like this, you sound like a wonderful mother/grandmother just keep your eye on him, thats all you can do till she comes to you.
WY

[skunkworks]

Er - its just occured to me that from your two posts and your profile it is impossible to figure out if you are a mother or father.

I said what I said thinking you were this girls father and my post was a reflection of what I would do - as a father - if someone acted this way with any of my daughters or their kids.

It seems WY thinks you are a mother! - and I have to say I am going to assume you are actually mum not dad as I trust WY's instincts far better than my own - in which case my male posturing is of no help whatsoever and sorry for the misunderstanding.

I think either way WY advice is spot on. I personally had to work harder on a situation that was developing with one of my daughters and a [potentially violent] moron, harder than i've worked on anything for along time.
It took 2 years of subtle psychology to get her to see this bastard for what he was and not what she had built him up to be in her mind.
He was manipulative, controlling, dishonest, verbally violent and a hugely nasty piece of shit.
He was doing 3 for nearly killing an immigrant and all this was via his phone in jail.

So violence was not necassary but by god it was a very very difficult time. Happy to talk further via pm if I can help.
I think I would [edited] this guy within 18 months of his release so thank god my daughter saw some sense.

I sincerely wish you the best, be you mum or pop:)

Kind regards,
SW

[OP8S]

Strangely enough skunkworks, your original post made me imagine you to be a mother...a very protective one at that! I'm a father & feel the same way you do about redesigning the fellows body parts, I know that I would have a hard job not to if I were to be put in that position if it was my daughter. I think if raven2uk was to go straight in there guns blazing though before trying to come to some more diplomatic conclusion then her daughter might see her family as being the bad ones not realising that they were doing it for her own good & she might drift towards this guy causing a family rift. We were all young once ( though it seems like a long time ago now! ) & usually think that you know best at that age. I know that if my parents had told me not to see somebody that I liked I would have payed no attention & deliberately broken the rules. I think we were all the same when we were young...were we? I think raven2uk has to have her daughter on her side to see what this guy is really like, hopefully she'll give him the sack then & if he persists to act like an a***hole it's time to get the hands dirty. I just hope that raven2uk doesn't lose the seemingly healthy relationship that she has with her daughter, family fallouts like that can take years to heal. Another thing, why was his bottle of meth so sticky? I can honestly say that I've never had a sticky bottle of meth. It's quite a simple proceedure to pour it out into a measure without spilling it down the side of the bottle, every ml goes down my throat, then I wash the bottle & measure out to make sure I have got every last drop inside me.

[skunkworks]

That is a really interesting post 60oNorth, and by heck as I read through it I swore to myself that it was me writing the things you said :-) especially the wash out the bottle of methadone to get every last drop hehe
Always a pleasure to find someone else on the same wavelength as one'-self.
Completely agree with your post.
Trouble is with these manipulative sons-of-bitches is the way they hook
straight into the poor girls sense of insecurity, work on it until everyone BUT the abuser is wrong.
Thus turning one's own family against itself, further driving that wedge between father/mother & daughter.
They are experts at playing one off against the other and they will not stop until they get what they want.
And that's the scary part, before you know it you've lost a daughter and gained an unwanted son-in-law;- neither of whom you will see more often than once every few months or so, especially if there are any nasty bruises to heal.
But hey, this for the original poster is a very very worse case scenario and I would like to think these replies to the op are about what could happen if left alone.
Just keep an eye out for the things said in the thread and be there for her if worse comes to worse, as I'm sure you would anyway.
My best,
SkWks.

[Fluoro]

60 DEGREES NORTH, If I read your earlier post on this thread correctly,u made a comment about bipolar-and that u find methadone a useful 'mood stabiliser',are u saying that u also suffer with bipolar? The only reason I ask this is because as I have already said many times on this site,and I have also found methadone 2 be an effective mood stabiliser. That is how I ended up taking methadone-I have never used heroin.

[Fluoro]

I found that methadone would take the edge off me being manic,I enjoyed being manic-it felt euphoric,but the problem was I could only work when I was manic,which served a purpose because my job was sales,and being manic made me quick witted,which enabled me 2 close sales..

[Fluoro]

The reason I resorted 2 meth was because when I returned 2 work after being off for a couple of months,whilst no one called me a fraud,equally no one would ask if i was feeling better-which told me they didnt believe my sick leave was genuine.So i resorted 2 meth,2 calm me down.At the time i didnt have a diagnosis