S24:E6. Melissa

[Elizzikra]

Wow - Melissa is a miracle! At age 19, Melissa has been using drugs since she was 13. She drinks heavily and uses alcohol and drugs daily. Her family completely enables her, not only letting her live at home, but moving from their original home to a new town in a (failed) attempt to remove "negative peers" from Melissa's life.

I really did not have high hopes for Melissa and she definitely proved me wrong. LOVED her interventionist, whom I have not seen before.

[tljgator]

3 minutes ago, Elizzikra said:

I really did not have high hopes for Melissa and she definitely proved me wrong. LOVED her interventionist, whom I have not seen before.

I said "she actually made it" out loud at the end because I was so shocked, lol. Unexpected, but hopefully they helped her family, too, because there was a lot going on there.

I liked new interventionist as well -- he did a great job of staying calm at her bullshit posturing and then talking to her one-on-one until she opted to go to treatment.

[Elizzikra]

Quote

I said "she actually made it" out loud at the end because I was so shocked, lol. Unexpected, but hopefully they helped her family, too, because there was a lot going on there.

I am somehow always surprised by the degree of enabling we see with these families and I really hope they got help as well. It felt more to me like Melissa embraced recovery and maybe her family didn't have to hold their boundaries because she didn't press to go home - but we don't really know. I do hope they got a lot of family therapy though because they needed it. 

[sara416]

Something was missing for me this episode and I'm not sure what it was. I feel like there was more to her story and we weren't given the information. They really glossed over the stuff with her mom at the beginning and the stuff she was getting into in her early teen years. They also never really outlined what drugs she was using, which I think it what led to me having little investment in her and little hope for her. The narrative of the episode didn't seem like "let's help an addict" it seemed more like "out of control party kid needs shipped away". I don't know...something just didn't sit the same as other episodes. 

[Elizzikra]

21 hours ago, sara416 said:

Something was missing for me this episode and I'm not sure what it was. I feel like there was more to her story and we weren't given the information. They really glossed over the stuff with her mom at the beginning and the stuff she was getting into in her early teen years. They also never really outlined what drugs she was using, which I think it what led to me having little investment in her and little hope for her. The narrative of the episode didn't seem like "let's help an addict" it seemed more like "out of control party kid needs shipped away". I don't know...something just didn't sit the same as other episodes. 

They sort of danced around it but I think that mom tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized for a long time, then maybe in and out of treatment? At some point Melissa was sexually assaulted and then she was sex trafficked. Plenty of trauma to fuel an addiction.

I didn’t get the feeling that she was super picky about what she would use but the three that I heard and saw most were alcohol, pot and cocaine. She said she started at 13, which is young.