Moms Behaving Badly

The other night I was watching Intervention on A&E. It was an episode about prescription addiction. One of the addicts was a young kid (probably around 18 or 19) who is addicted to OxyContin. His mother was also an addict, but after a relative threatened to turn her in she went to rehab and now takes a dose of Methadone every day. She says she is trying to get her son in to a rehab program too but she can’t afford it.

All of that seemed tragic enough, but it got even worse. First, the mother works in health care. I didn’t catch exactly what she does, but I think she was a nurse or nurse’s aid. Her addiction started when she was prescribed OxyContin after a back injury. The son says the first time he took OxyContin his mother gave it to him; a doctor did not prescribe it for him. Although the mother denies this and says her son stole it from her. Either way the mother is now supporting her son’s habit. He has no job and lost his license. So his mom gives him the money and drives him to his dealer so he can get his daily fix.

So she’s a nurse and a recovering addict, but she still supports her son’s drug addiction. They lived in what looked like a nice house. She drove him to his drug dealer in a newer model Ford Mustang. And she had the money to support his $40 a day drug habit. But she can’t afford to put him in rehab? I don’t care what it would take. I would sell my car and ride the bus. I would sell my furniture and sit on bean bag chairs. I would sell my house and live in an apartment. Borrow from friends and relatives. Write a letter to Dr. Phil. Whatever it would take to get my kid in to rehab. And I sure as heck wouldn’t be supporting his habit just because he was too scared to go through withdrawal.

And yet Tracy Holt makes the mother on Intervention look like a saint. Tracy Holt has a 13-year-old daughter who smokes, drinks and has sex and all Ms. Holt has to say about it is “there are worse things she could do.” Plus Ms. Holt’s rewards her daughter for good behavior with cigarettes. A 13-year-old who gets cigarettes for cleaning her room. Am I being punked?

And now her daughter goes to a new “special” school. Ms. Holt thinks this is a good thing because she believes the teachers at the old school were “too soft.” And she’s hoping these new teachers “will be stricter and [her daughter] will finally get the discipline that’s needed.” What?!? Hello?! Discipline starts at home.

What are these mother’s thinking?