Oh, life is not so great around my family unit.

I am not sleeping, I break down and cry alot, and every time an ambulance comes screaming down towards the hospital two blocks away, I cringe and wait for the phone to ring.

My 17-year-old sister is killing herself. I know, if she doesn't get help, like, now, she will probably die.

Yes, the interventions and trying to talk her out of it have happened. They have not worked.

She has been a behavior problem since, about, birth. When she was 14 she was arrested with some other boys for posession of marijuana. She was not charged. The boys said it was theirs. I had to drive my dad to pick her up from the police station, because my mom was at work and his truck was broke down at the time. She was higher than a kite and unapologetic. Some months later, she met KALEN. Kalen is the town flunkie, raised by two divorced drug-addicted parents. When we all met Kalen, we felt really really sorry for him. He always had some huge dramatic story about his father, and where he was lying at the time, foam coming out of his mouth and such. He was even allowed to stay at my parents home several times when his dad was beating on him, or hadn't paid the electric bill because the drugs were more important.

After about a year of them dating, things started coming up missing. Like money, watches, clothing of my brothers. We all were stupified... surely not Kalen! He wouldn't steal from us! He's such a good kid. Nope, just charismatic enough to almost get away with it, but stupid enough to wear the expensive watch back to my parents house. The watch was returned, and my sister took the blame, saying she had taken it and given it to him. Whatever, we all said.

Another time my brother Tom was getting ready to go make a cash deposit to his bank. He had just set down the envelope with the money in it on his dresser, and took a shower. He got out of the shower, and noticed the envelope and it's $800 contents were gone. He freaked out. He was yelling and running around... you can imagine. Then, he returned to his room to find the envelope, warm and FOLDED, when it was previously unfolded, on his dresser, with Kalen just leaving his room. They denied that one. Another time, my same brother (DON'T CARRY CASH, IDIOT) had $1300 taken from his car. Strangely enough, the next week my sister's unemployed boyfriend had bought a car. Hmm.

My sister is so stuck up that boy's ass that she has lost all of who she is. She has no opinions of her own. She is always high. She is never home. A few months ago, the police called my parents to pick up my sister from the police station again, at about 3 am. She was mad at her boyfriend about something, had snuck out of the house, and drove to his house. She wasn't allowed into his house for some reason, and sat outside honking the car horn and screaming. Someone called the police. My mom took her straight to the ER and had her blood drawn for drug testing. The next week, her PCP called with the results. She had significant amounts of alcohol, marijuana and METHADONE in her system. (Methadone is a heroine substitute in pill form, prescribed to addicts to help get off the crack.) She wouldn't tell anyone where she got it, and flatly and loudly denied that Kalen had anything to do with it. In fact, she says, Kalen doesn't even know she does drugs! Yeah, right. Saint Kalen.

So, she says, she just tried it that one time, and learned her lesson. Still, my parents took her to a drug counselor. She had them SNOWED, my parents and the counselor.

Still, she just hasn't been the same kid recently. The last time my mom took her to the doctor, she secretly asked the doctor to draw blood for another drug test. Friday afternoon, the doc called my mom and asked that she come in to talk about the results. My mom, who is not medically savvy, asked me to go along with her. So I did. This time, she had HUGE, VERY LARGE amounts of oxazepam, marijuana, and methadone. In fact, on the lab results sheet, next to oxazepam, it just said >2000 mg/dl. Which means there was so much, it went beyond what the machine could count.

A teenager I work with was telling me Saturday that she had seen my sister and Kalen at a party a few weeks ago. She said Brianna kept going outside and throwing up, and came back in laughing, and kept drinking, bragging to everyone that she had taken 4 klonopins that day.

You would think that by now, my parents would have forbade her to see Kalen, or perhaps just grounded her from leaving the house. Oh, if you only knew Brianna. They have tried, you see, and Brianna goes fucking apeshit. She screams that she will kill herself, that her and Kalen will just run away... ya know. My parents finally resorted to the opinion that if they push her away from him, it only pushes her closer to him. The more bad things they/we say about him, the more her opinion of him becomes more saintly and golden. She's a rebel, in every sense of the word.

My parents have also tried to find avenues to help her. For one, the drug counselor, which obviously didn't work. Two, they have called the police and asked that she be removed from the home, to anywhere, anywhere where she can't see Kalen anymore. That doesn't work either, because foster parents don't want a drug-addicted teen, and because the police don't seem to know of any other resources. Well, Saturday afternoon, I put my thinking cap on, and called every behavioral unit in the 4 state area. Nope, either she's too young, too drugged up (meaning they are NOT a detox unit) or HOW DARE YOU CALL US ON A WEEKEND. CALL BACK MONDAY. The one place she might be able to go to says to call this other intake company, and someone will come to your house, at their convenience, and then, THEN, you must go through the proper steps. (Outpatient drug counseling, first. Then, referral from said drug counsellor to an inpatient program. What a freaking joke.) My point is, there are no resources for a drug-addicted teen. It's pretty obvious to everyone that she just needs to get the fuck away from her hoodlum boyfriend, but that's nearly impossible.

I would rather it be crack. I only wish she was shooting up meth, or some other equally-brain-cell-killing street drug. Cuz then, then she would have someone, say, a dealer, to tell her, only take this much. This much will get you high. This much will kill you. She would be in a group of people who can tell her, that's enough. Plus, she could never afford enough to kill her.

But, prescription drugs? They are everywhere. They are cheap. They are safe. Hell, they are prescribed from a doctor. You can steal them from your grandma's cabinet. There are LOTS of them, sometimes hundreds of pills in one bottle. What's 4 or 5 or 6?

A death sentence, that's what.

But they don't know that. Those kids have no clue which pills in what combination will cause their breathing to cease, their hearts to stop, brain damage, or seizures to occur.

Saturday night my brother Tom was driving by and saw an ambulance, a firetruck, and three cop cars at my sister's boyfriend's house. He immediately called my mom on his cell and told her. She called Kalen's house. Brianna answered the phone screaming and crying that Kalen had "just stopped breathing," and that she would call her back, she was going to ride in the ambulance with him.

Kalen's own dad didn't even go to the hospital. Because HE was too drugged up. He didn't go to the hospital when his son had stopped breathing.

My mom wanted to go to the hospital to find out what had happened, but we knew it was drugs. People don't just stop breathing. I talked her out of it. I told her no one would tell her for sure, they couldn't tell her, she's not family. And her and Brianna would just get into a fight, and why go out there and cause a scene?

Brianna called while I was talking my mom out of going. Mom asked her, Was it drugs? Brianna vehemently denied it, saying the hospital staff said he must have had a seizure. Brianna was much calmer, meaning he must be ok. I asked mom for the phone.
I told her this: "You better march your ass to the nurse or doctor or whoever and tell them EXACTLY what pills or drugs he took. If you don't, they will most likely give him something that will kill him. They HAVE to know." To which she replied, "I can't believe you... he's laying in the hospital and that's all you have to say? You're just RUDE," and hung up on me.

Mom and I cried and waited and cried some more... that could've been her. She is going to die some day.

Then she called back. She asked my mom if she would pick her up, take her back to Kalen's dad's house to pick up her car, so that when Kalen is released, she can drive him home. Mom said, sure! She picked her up, and drove her straight home. Brianna freaked out, saying, fine, then, she would just walk. Just then, the clock turned midnight, and mom said, "You leave this house, and I'll call the police. It's past curfew. "

Brianna did actually stay home. I guess Kalen walked home when they took out the breathing tube and released him just a few hours later, you know, when the drugs wore off.

It's that time of year, again, as evidenced by the moping and serious lack of getting-up-and-getting-your-ass-out-of-bed work responsibility, and a certain general laziness and irritability.

It's not me, but my husband, who has been suffering from the dreaded yearly depression.

Of course, he's been to more therapists than Mary-Kate Olsen. He's been diagnosed with several disorders that range from dysthymic disorder (probably) to bipolar disorder (probably not). Yes, he's been given many prescriptions for various medications, learned the tools to properly deal with the illness, and blahblahblah. He won't take medications. He just flatly refuses. Which is fine, until it comes back... ... ...

As a woman, and a successful woman at that, I still find it hard to allow him to lose yet ANOTHER job because he can't get himself out of bed. I find it hard to be supportive, when I'm so busy supporting. Maybe I am terribly hippocritical here, but I want my man to work. I want to be successful and know that I can support the family, but I don't want to be the ONLY supporter, you know? ? It makes me resentful, and I know that isn't helping him. Am I really that cold?

Alas, last week his depression threatened to take over COMPLETELY, so I begged and pleaded and made him call his mom, who talked him into getting on an antidepressant. So, now he's on one of them new fangled continuous release jobbies, and he's doing much better. Then, um, he tried to call his boss, who won't call him back. I do believe he's lost his job, again.