I come to allnurses.com with a very heavy subject on my mind. I'm in a very delicate situation and I am looking for advice from you fellow nurses. After reading my post, ANY advice given will be appreciated.
I am currently a fairly new RN. I live at home with my mother, who is also an RN, and has been for many years. Personally, she has gone through some tough stuff lately. I have tried to be there for her as much as I can, but it is just not working. She has been drowning her sorrows in alcohol. Week by week it has gotten worse. She drinks a bottle of hard liquor each day she doesn't work. I know this is sad, but it is not the main problem. I recently discovered vials upon vials of IV pain killers (morphine, hydrocodone, etc.) and anti-anxiety medications (Ativan). She also has other injection paraphernalia such as syringes and IV needles. Also, she track marks up and down her arms. I know deep down she is stealing these drugs from work, from her patients that need these medications, and is taking them at home to try to mask the depression she is going through. I have tried talking to her about this, but she denies denies denies. On her days off she is completely loaded, but on days she works she SEEMS fine...
I feel I am in an ethical dilemma. On one hand, this person is my mom that is going through a hard time. On the other hand, she is a fellow RN who is stealing from her patients and putting them at serious risks.
My question to you nurses, is how should I handle this? Am I putting my license at risk by not bringing this information forward, even though it is my own mother? Should I just let things take its course and sit back and wait for either my mother or one of her own patients to die?
Thanks everyone for taking the time to read my post and I truely appreciate any advice.
I don't know what kind of facility your mother works for but is it possible that they would offer her the help she needs while keeping her job? A dear colleague of mine developed an addiction a few years ago and went to her employer asking for help before she got caught diverting. She entered rehab, worked with a restricted license for a while and is now a very successful manager at my facility. I tell you this in the hopes that the same could happen to your mother perhaps? Of course, not all facilities are like mine, either.
Could you encourage her to contact her EAP? Just a thought.
Thinking of you and your mother in this situation. Keep us posted. Blessings.
well, allow me to put it this way, what would you do if she wasn't your mother, but another relative (say an aunt)? or how about a close friend? or how about if she was just a colleague from work? or how about if she was a total stranger?
my point is, that sometimes, our own personal feelings clouds our judgment. you implicitly know what you have to do. sometimes, tough love is the best love. anything else, and you've become an enabler to a drunk & drug addicted nurse. i'm just sorry it happens to be your mother.
the first step is going to be the hardest step. report her to the authorities, to both protect her and her patients. she needs to be taken into a detox program to dry out from drink and drugs. thereafter, most employers are mandated to allow her to conditionally return to work (but not let her handle narcotics for a year or more). this is what she needs to get better.
good luck, and best wishes for her speedy recover.
Let me first say I am sorry you are going through this very difficult situation. Dealing with an addicted family member is so difficult.
In my opinion, you should NOT report your mother at this time. As others have suggested, you may want to seek the advice of an addiction specialist or EAP and get direction from them before you do anything. I would not disclose any information to the employer unless she continued to resist intervention.
Please, contact Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, the groups for people who care about family members or friends who have addiction problems. This is not something you deal with alone.
The sentence in bold type may be a reasonable supposition, but you don't know this for sure. I say this, not to protect your mother, but to point out that this is a side issue as far as you are concerned. Yes, it needs to be dealt with, but because you are not involved with her job, your first priority is to deal with her.
Please, contact counselors with one or both of the groups mentioned above. The websites should tell you how to find someone in your area. You need help in formulating an intervention. This is NOT something you can do alone, no matter how much you care about your mom.
I encourage you to also contact your own Employee Assistance Program for support for YOU. This is not an easy situation to deal with. Even if your mother is grateful down the road, she may despise you in the short term for forcing her to face reality. It may be necessary, but it isn't pretty.
She is fortunate to have someone who cares about her enough to step in and say, "Enough!"
Please, get help for both of you. This is too intense and too dangerous to handle by yourself. You also want it on record that you have been seeking assistance so that if things get really ugly, she won't be able to say the drugs are yours.
I wish you the best. Please, keep us posted on how you--and your mother--are doing.
aye, miranda....i am glad to see i am not the only one that thinks the OP needs to be careful for herself here. If her Mom is truly the addict that she (the OP) thinks, it would not be beyond the possible she would try to implicate anyone else to save herself......if the OP is still living at home, i think she needs to leave, asap.
there are lots of resources out there for folks that suffer from the disease of addiction that are health professionals; i am sure an online search would find the desired results. i believe there is, or use to be, an extensive inpatient drug treatment facility for medical folks in georgia run by a dr talbot. at any rate, as another poster has pointed out, you are enabling her to continue in this behavior if you sit by and do nothing. alanon and naranon are great places to go to help yourself; but they tend to help people detach from the situation and i don't know if they can help you with the intervention piece. find help with doing an intervention; whether it is family members, doctors, psych folks, close friends, etc. be sure to have your ducks lined up, i.e. have a treatment facility set up so if she says yes, you can ship her there right then and there; have her bags packed, don't give her any time to change her mind. don't do the intervention and then try to find a place to send her. sounds like she will need at least 5 days inpatient detox at the very least, so chose a facility that can handle that as well. i would use the 'report you to work' and the 'report you to the board' pieces as clubs to get her into treatment. if that doesn't work, then i think you owe it to your mom to turn her into the board (if you inform her work they may press criminal charges, so the board is probably the best solution). and yes i said owe it to her. those that suffer from the disease of addiction ultimately have only 3 places to go; jails, institutions, and death. help her before she kills someone or herself.
i know this is tough stuff; however you need to cowboy up (or as the girls at work say, put your big girl panties on) and do the right thing and practice tough love. i divorced a nurse who was caught up in this disease. she was arrested at her workplace, did time in prison, and died a few years later of this disease. perhaps, had i been less enabling and more proactive she might still be alive.
Her advice is spot on ... people close to an addicted person are at great risk of being drawn into the addiction process as enablers. The risk exists because of the very real caring we feel for people closest to us ... we want to help and don't quite know how. The groups mentioned by rn/writer exist to help sort this out.
I don't know where you live, but in Florida we have something called the Baker Act, which allows immediate family members to require adults to get mental help. I assume that it works for rehab too, not really sure. Maybe you could check into that - especially if you know she wouldn't go on her own.
The Herrington Recovery Center at Rogers Memorial Hospital is addiction treatment designed for professionals. Intensive residential treatment at Herrington features our Five-Day Evaluation for Professionals and Comprehensive Continuing Care Planning. Its cost effective treatment on a beautiful, wooded setting located between Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin.
A unique five-day evaluation also is available for professionals who interface with licensing boards and other regulatory agencies. To answer concerns that may be raised by employers, licensing boards or family members, a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment recommendations are provided.
Give these good people a call, and maybe they can talk you through what to do. This program works with professionals who have come voluntarily as well as those who have been legally mandated to get treatment as a condition of maintaining or regaining their licenses.
The can help you look at the options and decide what to do next.
Wow, what a tough situation to be in. Does your State Board of Nursing have an addiction program? Try going to their site and looking up info in 'Impaired Nurses'. The thing is, if there are this many vials in the home, then more than likely someone at work either knows about it or suspects it, and it is only a matter of time till she is drug tested, arrested, etc.
You can always call one of the Drug Treatment facilities in your area - trust me, they have treated many physicians and nurses - you would be amazed at the number.
Good luck to both of you and I am sorry you have to go through this.
Please, contact Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, the groups for people who care about family members or friends who have addiction problems. This is not something you deal with alone.
The sentence in bold type may be a reasonable supposition, but you don't know this for sure. I say this, not to protect your mother, but to point out that this is a side issue as far as you are concerned. Yes, it needs to be dealt with, but because you are not involved with her job, your first priority is to deal with her.
Please, contact counselors with one or both of the groups mentioned above. The websites should tell you how to find someone in your area. You need help in formulating an intervention. This is NOT something you can do alone, no matter how much you care about your mom.
I encourage you to also contact your own Employee Assistance Program for support for YOU. This is not an easy situation to deal with. Even if your mother is grateful down the road, she may despise you in the short term for forcing her to face reality. It may be necessary, but it isn't pretty.
She is fortunate to have someone who cares about her enough to step in and say, "Enough!"
Please, get help for both of you. This is too intense and too dangerous to handle by yourself. You also want it on record that you have been seeking assistance so that if things get really ugly, she won't be able to say the drugs are yours.
I wish you the best. Please, keep us posted on how you--and your mother--are doing.
The above poster had it spot on. Great advice. As a recovering addict who is also an RN, I wish someone would have turned me in, helped me with an intervention, etc. I am currently in my state's monitoring program and am SO thankful for all their requirements and support. I'm coming up on 18 months and can't even fathom going back to the life I was living before. I have also had a difficult year, losing my beloved grandfather in February and then my mother, who was only 56, in August to a massive aneurysm. Without the nursing board's program, my support system, and my recovery program, I more than likely have dealt with both of their deaths by returning to my painkillers and benzos. I am so sorry you are having to go through this but it can turn into something good. My husband and I are much closer now that we've been through hell and back. He was there for me and is learning that he, too, is sick. He's a model co-dependent and is learning how to overcome that. He does not enable me anymore and it's allowed me to step up.
Most states have a program for impaired nurses. I happen to live in a state with a VERY lengthy program (5 years) but some are as short as 6 months. Personally, I'm glad my state has me on contract for 5 years. Evidence based studies have shown that there is a high chance of relapse for nurses after about the 3 year mark. So they extended it to 5 years and have had pretty good success. If your mother seeks help in her own (i.e. turns herself in to her state's Board of Nursing), they may be more lenient on her. I know nurses who did not voluntarily turn themselves in and they are in a probation contract instead of a monitoring contract (which I am in).
Seeking out Al-Anon meetings may be very helpful to you. You will hear others who have gone or are going through similar emotions as yourself. You may hear something you like and it will help you make the decision that is best for you. Again, my heart goes out to you. I work daily with addicts and alcoholics and know how difficult it is to want to help those who are not ready to help themselves. Just yesterday, I had a patient who had been a nurse for years and is now an addict/alcoholic. I wanted to scoop her up and take her to my nurse support group to show her there was another way to live. It broke my heart to see what this woman had become and how devastating a life of addiction/alcoholism is.
I hope your mother is able to seek help for her disease and learn a healthier way to deal with whatever pain she is currently numbing with substance abuse. There are times when I think it would be nice to not hurt over losing my mom....I had no idea your heart could physically ache for someone until the day I had to order the vent turned off with my mother. But I also know that feeling my emotions and dealing with them is a much more appropriate way to live over swallowing a handful of pills and not caring. If there is anything I can do for you, please feel free to PM me. I also have numerous posts under the Recovery Forum about my story.
cookienay
197 Posts
I don't know what kind of facility your mother works for but is it possible that they would offer her the help she needs while keeping her job? A dear colleague of mine developed an addiction a few years ago and went to her employer asking for help before she got caught diverting. She entered rehab, worked with a restricted license for a while and is now a very successful manager at my facility. I tell you this in the hopes that the same could happen to your mother perhaps? Of course, not all facilities are like mine, either.
Could you encourage her to contact her EAP? Just a thought.
Thinking of you and your mother in this situation. Keep us posted. Blessings.