try to find a"parents of" alanon meeting,being with and talking to people that have been thru this can be extremely helpful.  The hardest thing with this is tough love, I learned the hard way that by enabling my son I acutually allowed this to continue longer. love her and be there for her but turn her over to her higher power. I tried a million ways to try to get him to stop but i finally had to  realize that I couldnt help him, he needed to want the help and the people in the rooms of AA are the only ones that can help him, but he also needed to want help.  He continues to struggle but he has some amazing support in the rooms.

schmeb...you most likely will go thru the same kind of reactions your daughter is going thru...agitation, anxiety, confusion, fear and more.  She's going thru it for a different reason. 

You have done the right thing by reaching out for others to support you.  You've found MIP and if you read the post; present and past you will be able to read very real responses to the similar problem you are going thru now.  You've got some here along with good suggestions....Stay here...read, post, check for answers because you are not alone by a long shot.  I don't know if heroin was involved when my alcoholic/addict wife went missing for a couple of days...I don't even know how they found her and got her into the hospital listed as a "Jane Doe".  It was a miracle that they even remembered to mention that they had a "Jane Doe" in emergency who had been there almost 48 hours.  Dang!! insane by any measure of the imagination other than if you included alcohol and drug addiction. 

You didn't have a clue she even used heroin.  What a wakeup call and now she is gone again.  Stick with us and turn it all over to a God of your own understanding cause substance addiction and alcoholism is the most cunning, powerful and baffling disease on the face of this planet.

Welcome here...any concerns or questions shout them out.  You're not alone (((((Hugs))))) 

Prayers for your daughter.  Hope she bumps into an N/A member (narcotics anonymous) who needs to work with others to stay clean and sober themselves.

Nothing rips our guts out like our kids! My oldest son became a gang member, had a $1000 a day cocaine habit for several years, and is an alcoholic as well. We raise our kids to be mature, responsible adults capable of taking care of themselves in the world once they're grown and out on their own. As often as not, the choices they make aren't choices that are good for them and - as hard as it is to admit - there's nothing we can do. As badly as we want to do anything for our kids, the fact is that there comes a time when we can't "kiss it and make it better" anymore. They have their own path to walk and their own lives to live, and sometimes, the only way they can learn the things they need to learn is by making horrible choices - and some of them can be real doozies! But the best thing we can do - not only for ourselves, but for them - is to let them go. The harder we try to stop them, the more determined they become anyway, so we just need to let them go.

I spent years telling my kids, "There are consequences for the choices you make. If you don't want to live with the consequences, then make different choices." My son ended up in jail a month before his 18th birthday. When he called me, I said, "I'll come visit you." And I did. When he was transferred to the group home, I'd go sign him out once a week or so and we'd go do something (go out to eat or go to a ball game or something), then I'd take him back. I also went to every court hearing he had, even though my job was an hour away and it cost a lot in gas and lost time at work. I was there for him to the best of my ability, but I refused to bail him out. I let him live with the consequences of his choices, and you know what? He's never been back to jail. He decided he didn't like the consequences of his choices. It was still two or three years before he got serious about getting sober, but I think that was the beginning of him realizing that consequences aren't always fun, and he started thinking it was time to start making different choices.

The end came for me several years ago. He'd been off drugs for a while but was still drinking, and his wife had left him for someone else, taking their daughter with her. He and his friend (neither of whom had a job) both moved in with me. I was barely making it on my own, but I didn't feel I could turn him away. After a few weeks, though, I'd had it. All my bills were going up but my income wasn't, and they weren't even helping around the house. The final straw came when, in the midst of doing everything I could to get my son some free legal help so that he wouldn't lose his daugther, he started throwing his clothes into a duffle bag and screaming at me that I was just trying to run his life and tell him what to do. I finally snapped and said, "You know what? You're right! I've done everything I know to do, to do what's best for everyone else without regard to what's best for me, and I'm done!" They moved out that day - then went around telling everyone that I threw them out!

I didn't see or hear from him for a little over a year and a half. I had no clue where he was, or even if he was still alive. Then, as I was in the process of moving away and getting married, I got a very apologetic letter from him. He was finally in AA and wrote to me as part of his amends. We've been working on putting our relationship back together for about two years now - and when he got his first year chip in AA, he sent it to me with another really nice letter saying that I deserved to have his chip because he never would have gotten into the program if it hadn't been for me.

I hope your story has a happy ending, too - but it'll be hell to pay in the meantime. Keep coming back here to MIP, and find a face-to-face group, too, because you'll need it to help get you through. Do what's best for YOU - in the end, it'll also be what's best for her.

Red Hawk