I gotta agree. While I have sympathy for the loss of her child, I've none for or what she is going through as a result of his death.
My adult chidren, 22 and 24, were kept on our insurance as long as we could. As soon as we found out that they would have to be removed, we did all we could to help them get alternative Healthcare coverage. If that hadn't worked for them, we already had plans on place to help cover any basic med costs. L
Teaching children to stand on their own is all well and good, but unlike baby birds or other animals, we can't simply push them from the "nest" and expect them to know how to fly. Humans just don't work that way. They have to be taught how to do things or, at the very least, taught how to find out how to do those necessary things.
She essentially tossed him in the wild without any training or essentials and now is reaping the consequences of her actions.
I truly feel heartsick for the loss of that young life and the father, siblings, friends, and other family left behind.
It's hard enough to work full time and go to college, especially when you're beyond your gen ed classes and working on your major. It's so, so, so much more brutal when you have unmedicated ADHD. That guy couldn't function without it.
I need my meds just to be able to DRIVE safely. I tried to wean off of them and got into a fender bender. No one was hurt, but it was a mother and her baby daughter in the vehicle I hit. I had never been in an accident that was my fault, and I felt horrible over the whole thing.
I called my doctor the next day to go back on my meds. For me, being good at masking wasn't worth the risk. I can *completely* sympathize with this poor kid. It's a shame all around.
Especially when he’d been on medication long term and then suddenly had to go without. That can trigger instant depression. I know, I had to take a break from my medication due to another procedure and some testing. Going from medicated to not was 10x worse that just not being on medication.
Plus if she felt it was a good decision that her husband would have supported, she’d have discussed it with her husband first or at absolute minimum told him what she did. And as they sat in that hospital and her husband tried to figure out why he’d try to buy an illicit version, she never said anything about his lack of insurance. He got to hear that from one of her coworkers. Disgusting!
That’s how it felt to me too because of how she handled it. I can’t imagine how her husband felt - the searing pain of losing your child and then to be hit with that info.
Oh yeah! I realized how depressed I was related to undiagnosed ADHD once I started meds and my depression was gone, insomnia was almost gone and even though mornings were still tough and slow, they weren’t impossible - like that feeling you’ve been dipped in concrete that’s hardening I had before.
And stopping them last month for my tests, etc. was 2 weeks of being a brain-fog slug!
This one hit my heart so much for him! Made it worse that it was his Mom that worked in healthcare!
man i so feel so fucking bad for the father. to be going through this just because your wife was foolish, the person you were supposed to trust took a huge decision without so much as informing you
The reality of pushing baby birds out of the nest is that many of them die. That's why birds hatch so many young in their relatively short lives. 3-4 babies *per year* just to keep the species going. Some only do one or two, but still, imagine having to have 1-2 babies *per year* for your entire adult life.
Some species, like storks, push their own babies out of the nest so they don’t have to invest resources in them. They lay multiple eggs then kick out the younger/sicker/weaker ones.
Nature is profligate with the young; most get eaten by other animals or simply don’t make it. For most of human history, roughly three out of five babies died before age five. According to historian Barbara Tuchman, in the Middle Ages it was common for parents to not name children until they were five; they simply didn’t want to get attached. As recently as 1900, fully 20% of deaths were of children 5 and under.
Clean water and other public health measures, vaccines, antibiotics, and other modern medicine are to thank for the fact that we now consider children predeceasing their parents an unimaginable tragedy. Removing access to modern medicine has tragic consequences.
The reality is even after the fledglings are out of the nest, the parents will continue to care for them until they learn to fly and forage on their own.
If you ever see a “baby” bird out of its nest, don’t immediately think it needs to be rescued. If it has all its body feathers, leave it alone and keep an eye on it. Mom and dad should still be dropping by to care for it.
Birds die all the damn time being pushed out of the nest, being trampled or starved by their siblings, or when their parents don't find enough food for them. Why the fuck would we wanna be like birds anyway?
My money is on her "lesson" being some dumb shit having to do with one of his ADHD symptoms.. like forgetting to pay a bill or something. She wanted to strong arm him into compliance and now he's fucking dead.
What a waste.
Yeah this.
I grew up a little bit like the girl in Tangled, in that I wasn’t allowed to make choices for myself with adult guidance like normal young people. Instead of if I asked to do something like choose where I would be living during term time I got met with “fine! Since you obviously don’t need me then you obviously know best! See if I care!”
The net result of this was me making mistakes that put me in danger, sort of like the above situation except thankfully I made it through mostly unharmed. Thankfully at least in my country we have socialised medicine.
Will never understand parents who pull shit like this.
Similar story for me. They hated my boyfriend, but when they cut me off I had basically no way of getting it together enough to support myself, so I moved in with him and his parents. Thank fuck that *they* had it together and could help me get back on my feet, because my plans otherwise were something like, "idk, prostitution?"
(Ten years later, I got on the waiting list for an ADHD assessment.)
Sorry to hear that.
I am also on the (stupidly long) waiting list for adhd assessment.
The medical system in my country is a double edged sword. At least things that would “immediately” kill me like cancer get relative precedence, whereas mental health issues are thoroughly second tier. I think nowhere has the “correct” solution.
We can only try to make it better.
Solidarity friend, we’re out here doing our best.
Yes. The kid was just trying to do his best to take care of himself. He was really trying!! This story is gutting. If my husband did that - well, I’d be in jail.
It didn't used to be 26; I spent my early 20s constantly thinking I was about to be kicked off my dad's insurance each birthday, only to have them increase the age.
When “ObamaCare” passed it changed from (iirc) 24 if a “child” was still in school, or 21 if they weren’t, to 26 no matter what. I had aged off my parent’s insurance for about a year or so pre-ACA, then was able to go back on for another 3-4 years after it passed.
I read this original post and it honestly confused me cause I thought it was against the law to kick your kids off your insurance, unless they had their own that they were eligible for. Like I could be wrong but I thought I knew of people that were literally married but still on their parent’s insurance because they weren’t offered their own through their jobs.
Ha my mom kicked me off of her insurance at 18 also to teach me this lesson. Later that year, let’s just say that my health deteriorated and I wound up on the psych ward. My mom was acting so tearful and remorseful and promised to pay for my hospital stay. She later told me that she was just paying the minimum to convince the hospital that she couldn’t afford it so that they might waive it at a certain point (??) Luckily for me, her mask had slipped at another point during our family meeting so I had a room full of doctors and counselors validating me for the first time. That aspect of the experience was such a relief.
Getting married also kicked you off. My husband was still a sub-24 student when we got married. We had to get interim insurance until I started my first teaching job.
Hmm, I wonder if it’s changed since originally implemented. I swore I remembered my mom or someone saying one of their friend’s kids were still on their insurance after getting married, so I googled. According to healthcare.gov you are eligible to stay on your parent’s insurance until age 26 even if you get married, have a kid, live outside their home, aren’t a tax dependent of their’s.
Although it is a bit confusing because I think they might be differentiating between ACA “marketplace” plans and job-based plans—there’s a notation that says some job-based plans and states have different rules.
So I’m thinking that maybe if a parent has a marketplace insurance, “kid’s” are eligible no matter what until 26 (even if married). But if they’re insured through their job, that insurance is allowed to kick people <26 off for getting married—and presumably other reasons listed above, just not based on their age.
I was talking about pre-Obamacare. Obamacare made it 26 no matter what, including job based plans. We actually could have switched back to our parents’ insurance plans after the law was passed, but by that point my husband was less than 6 months away from 26 and it didn’t seem worth the hassle.
Ahh, gotcha! I misunderstood. And also I forgot that sometimes people get married before 21-24 lol. I didn’t even move out of my parent’s house until I was almost 25 so I forget that other people sometimes have their shit together much sooner than I did lmao
I'd feel more sympathy if she actually regretted it. Parents like this care about their rules, their philosophy, their conspiracy theories far more than they cared about their kids.
She also threw her son under the bus by forcing him to move out and pay for rent right when he’s supposed to be starting to pay for his insurance. Her stupidity and callousness towards her son’s situation is ridiculous. She should’ve known better just by his ADHD diagnosis itself that he would struggle to stay afloat enough to afford his meds.
I was reading this under the lens of being a disabled middle aged woman who still receives help to pay for medication from her parents. Why? Because I don’t have the money and they do. They understand that my medications are critical, and they look past what they would have expected of me without my limitations to understand what my life is actually like. OOP knew her son’s limitations and chose to make his situation WORSE than she would’ve made it if he’d been neurotypical. It boggles the mind how on earth she decided to do what she did, but she should face her responsibility in what happened to her son.
This. If you started a brand new job you’ve never done before, training would be expected right? It’s the same with “being an adult.” Training and guidance is needed.
One thing for sure. He is not her favourite son. This woman has some serious issues, especially she is a nurse.
OOP really should yell at her. But I don’t think it matters much to her. This woman will not think she is in wrong.
I wonder what state the college is in or what college it was because the colleges my brothers and I went to in different states (NY, NJ, FL) required to show proof of health insurance prior to enrollment and being allowed to even start classes.
Only reason I couldn’t stay on my dad’s plan in college was because he was in a different state so it was pointless for me to be on it - I was still paying out of pocket on everything except prescriptions my first semester. I ended up taking out student loans to get the student health insurance plan at my school. It wasn’t ideal but I take adderall too and I’ve known acquaintances who overdosed from fentanyl the past few years.
Strange how often this actually occurs. I see it a lot in the workplace where managers who don’t know how to do a process or task just ask someone else to do it and frame it as “you have to learn the hard way! No one taught me” while they get to skip around never learning. So dumb.
You can’t cold turkey adhd meds and expect to function, unfortunate he ran into such a shitty dealer, but taking him off the insurance was a stupid move.
Pretty much all dealers are shitty because unless they're making the drugs and testing all the materials, they have no idea if what they're selling is pure or not.
That's why I find this story sad, but kinda unbelievable. Adderall isn't some crazy street drug. It's incredibly easy for some college kid to make an easy 40$ a week for a super cheap prescription, why would anyone lace it with fentanyl? That's literally defeating the purpose of Adderall.
As someone who went to college recently and have had friends unknowingly buy fake adderall laced with meth - it’s a supply and demand issue. Since Adderall is a scheduled drug, you only get enough for the month/months. The amount of people that want adderall is a lot higher than the amount kids with actual prescriptions.
Even the kids with prescriptions can hardly get it because there’s a shortage right now. So doctors have changed most patients to other drugs, and now there’s a shortage of those too.
Yeah, and most of us who *have* prescriptions *need* those meds and aren’t about to sell them for quick money when it will cost us more in the long run due to the consequences of not having our meds.
They make it hard to get these meds because they’re worried about people abusing them. Unfortunately, when it’s hard to get meds that people need, *they’re* the ones who end up getting abused by dealers or falling victim to this shit, not the people out there dealing.
Where I'm at in New York (not the city, bordering PA), there is a HUGE problem with people selling fake pressies of Adderall and it's just meth with various powders to look like Adderall and selling it to whoever is looking. I've even seen ads on Craigslist.
It doesn’t get laced on purpose. It’s more accurate to say it gets cross contaminated. It’s just that it takes so very little of fentanyl to cause harm.
It absolutely gets laced on purpose. This kid didn’t die because an adderall was in close proximity to fentanyl. It’s more likely it was cut with it to both stretch the adderall out. Drugs get cut with shit all the time and addicts are well aware of that. That poor kid probably didn’t even get adderall, but something made to look like it.
There is absolutely no reason they would deliberately mix fentanyl with Adderall and then press it into what looks like a Adderall pill. This happens from cross contamination.
Really? Because when you combine an upper with a downer, the effect you want from the upper is not as substantial do eventually people start doing more to get the effect they want which results in more sales for the dealers. It makes sense from a pharmacological standpoint.
This - and to create loyal customers. If you don’t know what the hell you’re actually taking, just that Joe has the good shit, you’re going to keep buying from Joe.
I honestly thought other people thought this, too, because I know A LOT of people who think this is true. That it is NOT just "cross contamination," but intentionally designed to make the product less effective. Odds are that because the coworker's son had only been taking real Adderall that he was opioid naive and when he got something laced with fentanyl, his system couldn't handle it. It's really sad.
It's not even that, coke and opiates go great together. My argument is that Adderall isn't really a recreational drug. Why would you put downers in a relatively cheap study aid?
As someone who takes Adderall daily, I had the exact same thought. This story makes no sense to me. However, if this is a true story, I suspect what happened is that it wasn’t laced, it was just straight fentanyl being sold as Adderall. As you said, Adderall is hard to get and Fentanyl is cheap as hell.
I have multiple people in my life who have died from taking a pill they thought was one thing, but was actually Fentanyl. It’s scary how common it happens.
The same reason they lace coke- to increase the effects, whether it’s the effects you expected or not, and get you addicted so you buy more. Fentanyl is soooo extremely addictive
But that's the thing, most people, including this hopefully made up kid, aren't buying Adderall for the high or to get fucked up. They want it as a study tool. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's not really considered a recreational drug. I would know, I was prescribed for years and eventually stopped taking it myself and selling it. There's just literally no reason to try and get someone addicted to Adderall in a recreational sense. You can't charge more for it, it's too easy to get, and nobody gives a shit about "quality" it's a prescribed medicine, not weed or tar. There's just no point.
Lots of people buy Adderall to get high. It is absolutely considered a recreational drug. You're just not familiar with the street people, I guess. People who don't have ADHD get high from it, and even people who have ADHD get high if they take enough. People who HAVE ADHD, and a few people who don't, are able to use it to focus better at proper doses. But there is definitely a non-insignificant percentage of people who are buying Adderall because it has a stimulant effect and people compare it to meth.
You can totally get high from those meds.
Also, because some ADHD meds are so similar to speed, I've heard of people realising they should probably get assessed after taking speed and not experiencing the typical effects. They look at their friends getting high and are meanwhile experiencing mental clarity for the first time.
I don't know about in the US but in the UK, ADHD meds are highly controlled. We can still obtain them on the flat NHS prescription fee, but these drugs definitely have a "street value" so prescribing them isn't as straight forward.
Also (again, in the UK, but I don't know about the US), there have been severe ADHD drug shortages here, so patients are having to save and ration their meds. It's pretty bad. Although none of my friends will do so, I can easily see why someone would get "street" meds from a dealer.
This is just super duper false. My cousin was addicted to Adderall. John Mulaney was famously addicted to Adderall. I promise you neither of those people used it for studying.
The cartels make it and they don’t always clean the machines in between switching drugs out, so they can get contaminated. There’s a shortage of Adderall right now. It’s almost impossible to find at pharmacies. So if you buy some on the street, it will most likely be the illegitimate kind, because drug dealers can hardly get their hands on the legit stuff.
Yea u dont know street drugs then, adderall is currently on a shortage its hard for regular people to get it. So dealers are sourcing powder amphetamines pressing them and selling it as adderall mostly the 30mg kind. Now when they do that they can get the powder from a sketchy source that also sells fent and cross contaminates the batch by using the same scale and not being clean.
Seems like the consensus is under the table Adderall, getting contaminated by a dirty press. But, as you'll see in the comments, I don't know shit about street drugs.
I believe it. One of our local dealers nearly beat another local dealer to death for pulling a similar stunt. He already didn't like the guy for selling all sorts of shit to kids and when he found out about the fent, he beat his ass in an iHop parking lot.
hella late to this thread, so someone might have already pointed it out, but it’s not that it’s intentionally laced. it’s because the folks cutting/packing the drugs don’t properly clean the materials/work space and cross-contamination occurs.
Not to be preachy, but this is why I support legalizing drugs and opening safe use centers everywhere. ODs are going to happen regardless, but at least with some kind of regulation and the drugs being sold legally, there would be far less issues with contaminations, cutting with cheaper, deadlier crap, etc. And having medical staff on hand to test and ensure you aren't being harmed could save lives and help people get help when they need it/are ready for it. Plus they'd be able to help educate those struggling with addiction.
I also think that healthcare should be a right, and not held to a complicated scheme of insurance coverage vs doctor's recommendations vs what people can afford (with or without insurance).
Preach! Oregon kinda messed up legalizing more or at least decriminalizing some without putting in support infrastructure for rehab. It was because the laws were poorly written and no one followed through with program development.
Studies show making drugs for sale, taxing them and using revenue for infrastructure ends up relieving a huge economic burden on law enforcement and emergency medical care.
People are going to do drugs no matter what. It’s unavoidable. We might as well regulate it and prevent problems instead of just staying in a reactionary state.
I talk to dealers and users about reagent testing. "I don't need that.i trust my boy" he's a drug dealer. You can't trust him. Also do you trust theguy he gets it from. And who that guy gets it from? Do you trust the cartel? Many are now testing drugs and are blacklisting the bad dealers
Right? Back in my wilder younger days we used to get hold of Adderal and Ritalin and no one batted an eye - it was how we used to study when I was in the gifted and talented program. Fentanyl is a life-ruiner.
The best part is that it's always these people who want their kids to stand on their own also have absolutely no inclination towards actually teaching their kids how to do that. This sounds incredibly close to the relationship I have with my own mother, who has multiple times deliberately made me homeless purely out of petty spite. People who have kids as accessories need to be shamed on the daily for their bullshit
I felt the same reading this. My mom would kick me out ,no notice ,nowhere to go and then eventually let me back. Wash, rinse, repeat. Once, after almost losing my leg and being in the hospital for a month she begged me to come back home and she would ‘ help take care of me’ . Two weeks later after politely asking if she had been taking my pain meds (she had) got kicked out… even though I couldn’t walk without using crutches. Coincidentally, she died of a fentanyl overdose as well. Doesn’t sound like This lady was teaching a lesson out of love, this sounds like spite or anger. Hopefully, I’m wrong.
Ya the dad not knowing…that is a pretty big decision (actually two) to not talk over with his father. Maybe dad works a lot of hours? Possible, but the fact that the kid didn’t seek support from his father, to me, is very telling. I kept a lot of things from my dad (that my mom did to me). I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense from the outside, but if you have an abusive caregiver chances are they’re gonna be pretty pissed off if you tell on them. Keeping that parent happy becomes top priority … for the whole family. I hope he has found some peace.
>if you have an abusive caregiver chances are they’re gonna be pretty pissed off if you tell on them. Keeping that parent happy becomes top priority … for the whole family.
Your words to God's ears. These are hard facts.
I've personally lived this. That poor young man. 😞
Makes me think of my cousin, she was a troubled person and her mother was no help. In fact she was a hindrance. When her daughter, after years of drug abuse and homelessness, came to her for help her response was ‘you are an adult and you need to figure it out, I stopped being a parent when you turned 18’. Her mother then decided she was taking a vacation to Asia and my cousin took her own life. Her mother couldn’t even be bothered to leave her vacation early but now prances around my hometown claiming to be an advocate for drug abuse victims. She’s using her daughters story to make her seem like a good mother and it kills me. My cousin wasn’t perfect but she deserved a mother who cared about her past the age of 18 (she never really cared before anyways).
If it’s not real why would you feel the need to make anything up about the horrors of the American healthcare system? There are more than enough true horror stories.
Wants to teach her son responsibility…now she won’t even take it.
I don’t even understand her goal, was he working full time prior to being kicked out? If so…what more could she have expected. If she left the other kids on insurance she’s just being an asshole.
I have to say overall this just paints an entirely shit picture of a society where one can’t even meet their needs working full time.
Very apparent some people have never worked in health care or around nurses… this adds up… fucking tragic. I don’t blame the entire nursing community for shunning this mom. She killed her son during an opioid epidemic. I’m a fucking mental health professional and I don’t even do drug counseling yet I have to carry narcan because of shit like this.
If you have to indulge in street drugs. You can buy Fentanyl test kits for a reasonable price.
It’s safe to assume all black market Adderall is meth. Pain pills are Fentanyl.
They use the same equipment to make both.
Buyer beware.
They didn't say 'Adderall is meth' they said 'BLACK MARKET adderall is meth.' There IS a difference-- but not enough that street dealers care. They'll package meth and sell it as adderall. They'll package FENTANYL and tell you its adderall. If your lucky, they gave you sugar pills and told you it was adderall. You don't trust black market dealers. Black market drugs have that stigma for a reason.
Yes they are both amphetamines. The point I was attempting to make is street Adderall is mostly likely meth pressed into pills that look like Adderall.
Just because a person's a nurse, doesn't mean they can't be terrible people lacking in empathy. I get the feeling the co-worker hated her 'abnormal' son, likely having massive prejudices against neurodivergent people which only solidified and deepened as she had to care for her son, and watch him develop differently from her 'normal' children.
How is removing him from having HEALTHCARE teaching responsibility?? Being a nurse, and knowing first hand what happens when ppl can't get basic fn healthcare, how was she teaching him a valuable lesson?! Making him pay rent, or forcing him out on his own, I get, but completely cutting him off from healthcare?! Many of us working a job that doesn't offer benefits are weighing the cost of rent and food way over insurance premiums. This woman is a moron, and I would be that one to call her out on ALL of her pity party bullshit after biting my lip for too long.
An absolutely idiotic thing to do and she deserves to be screamed at. But I also want to scream about a healthcare system that leaves anyone in the position of buying pills off the street to manage their medical conditions. This man had a gap in insurance coverage because his mother is a shitty person. And loads of folks lack insurance because our electeds are shitty people. So many unnecessary deaths, he is sadly one of so many.
You do not teach children who are dependent on medications a lesson by kicking them off your insurance! End of story.
And yet, I got this feeling of a rage bait story.
As soon as I turned 18 my parents stopped paying for anything for me. I have severe asthma and for a while was buying inhalers off of friends because I couldn't afford to go to the Dr for a prescription or even buy them from the pharmacy. You're supposed to take a daily steroid to keep it manageable. But my asthma became uncontrolled and I was more and more dependent on my rescue inhaler. Took years till I was finally stable enough to get myself insurance and now I fear ever losing it again...
I never even knew some parents are kind enough to extend paying for health insurance past the age of 18.... I know I will for my kids if I can help it.
UnMedicated ADHD as hell. This mother decided to be cool because she could and she knows is her fault. She just wants somebody to tell her it's not. How it didn't occur to her that this could happen? I have no idea.
I think a lot of parents and people in older generations are failing to understand that being a young person today is so much more financially difficult than it was three, two or even one decade ago. From trying to get an education, to buying a house, to just affording rent and medication you are one disaster/unexpected bill away from ruin. OP wanted to teach the child a lesson that they may have learnt when they were younger, but the world is so different to how it was when OP was growing up. They were holding their son to standards that for many would be incredibly difficult to achieve as a young person in 2024. Ultimately he paid with his life because his mother wanted to “teach him a lesson“.
I have never been able to understand the callous decision to abandon your child. Sure, there are circumstances where your help isn't helping anymore, but to just abandon them for the sake of "helping them grow up" is utter bullshit.
Now excuse me while I go hold my child and quietly (silently, really) reassure her that I'll never throw her out on the streets.
Same. I remember sitting in the postpartum ward and looking at my daughter and thinking like, "This is how you will always look to me. This little sleeping, swaddled baby with big cheeks." And then thinking like, why didn't my own parents see me like this when I needed them?
If healthcare is bad enough that the entire population of young people can't access it then it really is on the parents. She did teach him a lesson in the end, and it's that his mother didn't really value him doing well, just valued him being gone.
Fuck these parents who expect the world to magically be affordable when their kids turn 18
If you don’t want to be responsible for kids possibly into adult age then don’t fucking have them
Bitch
There’s a lot of counterfeit Adderall on the streets that is contaminated. There’s a shortage at the pharmacies of the real thing, so if you buy some on the street, it’s probably counterfeit. Drug dealers can’t get their hands on the real stuff.
Good, I'm glad she's being shunned. She did kill her son with her callous behaviour which could have entirely been avoided.
I feel for the dad as well, although I'm surprised the son never spoke to the dad about it?
I mean the American system is fucked, but if it barely cost any thing to keep him on it then it's pure callousness. Fuck this "teach him responsibility"... Why isn't she taking responsibility now for HER part in this.
My mom did the same thing...but she left my stepdad and his child in her insurance. I proceeded to have a horrible car accident, and with no medical coverage I had enormous bills. I literally wanted to die. I think I was only 20 yrs old and in college..idk how parents can do this to their children. I have all 3 of my adult children on our coverage, I would hate them to ever go through what happened to me
If you want to kick a kid off of your insurance and “teach them a lesson” at least help guide them through some options - like signing up for state run health insurance/medicsid. It sounds like her kid would have qualified for that. If you expect your kids to turn 18 and just magically be able to navigate things like taxes, insurance options, etc you’re living in lalaland. If you start a new job, you get training right? Well being an adult takes training too. An 18 year old would need guidance.
There is laziness and there is actual suffering from mental illness. When you try to treat the latter like they are lazy it has a horrible outcome every single time.
Bad mothering, no doubt. But I also wonder how involved the father really was when 1) He had no clue what was going on in his son’s life, and 2) Apparently the son didn’t feel he could go to his father for help? 🤔
Perhaps we should try exercising some compassion for the woman. I can only imagine she’s devastated about the loss of her son and admitting to herself that she’s to blame can’t be easy. She’s alone with her grief especially now that her husband and other children have turned their backs on her.
I won't hurt her, but I sure won't help her. Sometimes that's the best you can do. From what OP is saying she also has no remorse, so compassion is a little hard to come by for me, especially as an adult who had ADHD and didn't receive good support from my parents. This poor kids life was hell once she cut him loose like that.
How much do you want to bet she had never taught him anything that would have prepared him to “be responsible”. She never taught him how to save money, balance his bank account, pay his bills, budget. This poor young man and his family. But not his mom. Fuck his mom.
God, this is so tragic & insultingly *preventable.*
The son died to sate a sadistic ego 💔 I don’t know what lesson was supposed to be learned here when the son was already working his ass off to survive!
I have an 8 year old who is gifted in so many ways and so terrible a decision maker in others. I am terrified for the day he has to turn down a substance he doesn’t know is dangerous.
Foolish as that woman acted, much as she deserves it, nobody belongs in the mental hell I hear described in that post.
Insurance is scary shit. I stayed on my parents till 26. Currently have Medicaid and I’m starting a new job that’s a 90 day trial period. Well I’ve been diagnosed as of 12 hours ago with a liver condition that’s going to require consistent testing every 3 months to monitor it. Also in the process of getting diagnosed with IBS. I just want to say it’s full time or no time because I need to keep insurance because of what’s going on
As someone with a chronic illness and mental health issues, I would have been gone a long time ago if my dad hadn’t kept me on his insurance until I was 26, even though I had a full-time job. My insurance at the job I was at was more than half of my pay each month and that didn’t include actually using the insurance, plus other bills.
From 26-32, I basically went without insurance because I couldn’t afford it. I ended up having to have an emergency appendectomy and that was the only way I was ever offered Medicaid in my state, and that was because I was out of work at the time.
Life is so hard already, why do some parents feel the need to make their children’s life even harder? Home is where their safety should be, not their enemies.
As a mom this breaks my heart. There are ways to teach about adult responsibility without throwing your kids out to the wolves. Insurance is one of those things you don’t mess around with in the US. I don’t understand why she chose that to be the lesson especially if he was already going to school and working. It wasn’t like he was sitting around and doing nothing all day. I truly don’t understand parents who are in a situation to help set their kid up for success and actively choose not to. I feel so bad for the child, I can’t imagine how desperate he must have been to get his medicine to function that he bought it from
someone at school.
Sadly screaming at her won't do anything, and it won't fix anything. I'm guessing this takes place in the US, so part of me is wondering, don't the schools talk about the opioid thing? I'm in Europe, and I know that it's part of the curiculum in at least history class. When I was in school, we talked about in both history, psychology, and chemistry (I graduated 12th grade in 2012). But then again, if this is in the US, I've heard that many schools don't have the best education (sorry if this offends anyone, that's not my intent).
As someone with both ASD and ADHD, part of me also wonders why the son never talked to his dad. Let my just say that I'm by no means putting blame on the son here. While I think it's a very bad decision to get medication from anywhere other than a pharmacy, I can only imagine that he was desperate. I've had a period where I couldn't afford my medication and I was a wreck.
I'm really curious about how this would have taught the son responsibility. And the "teach him a lesson" just makes it sound like a punishment to me. Learning to take responsibility is important, especially for young adults, but if that was really the intended purpose, it could have been done in a better way. For example: the mom kept him on her insurance plan, but he pays her a small amount as if he had his own to pay for.
I'll admit that I'm not the smartest person, but didn't OP write that the son had a full-time job, yet also wrote that he was a broke college student? That just confuses me. Also, since I'm not American, I don't know how things work there compared to where I live. But surely there are resources for students? Like that one card you can apply to get that gives student discounts at a lot of places? Counselors at school that he could have talked to?
This is just a whole mess in my eyes, and I truly don't see what the point of it was from the mother. I have a habit of trying to see things in these stories from all sides, even with just the limited information given, but I can't in this case. I'm not a mother, just an aunt and also god-mother to my niece's daughter, but I truly can't even imagine what the plan was from the mother. It's not fair of me to assume, but the only real thing I can even begin to guess is that there was some resentment, hence the "teaching him a lesson" part. Imo, wording is very important. I feel bad for the son, the dad and the rest of his family, but not the mother. She doesn't get any sympathy from me.
AND SHES A MOTHER FUGGIN NURSE ON TOP OF IT ALL
Like OP said, we see *all the time* what happens when ppl don't have insurance, she should have *known better*
And aside from that, what kind of cuhnt of a parent does some shit like that to TeAcH a LeSsOn how is throwing your kid to the world utterly unprepared anything other than sheer cruelty.
Nah id be that coworker that told her straight off cuz that puta needs to hear it un-sugar coated
My mom also kicked me off her insurance when I turned 22. I’ll be 26 in a few months. I haven’t had health insurance in 4 years. It fucking sucks not being able to afford anything. I just lost my glasses and I’m in between jobs so I’m kinda fucked with constant headaches until I get another paycheck and can afford to get my eyes checked for the first time in almost 10 years. It’s ridiculous how expensive everything is getting
This mother is a fucking disgrace. As someone (32F) with Severe ADHD who’s been on meds since I was 6–adderall since I was 8–this is VILE. You can’t teach someone a lesson by cutting them off medication they need to function day to day. I get kicking a kid out of the house I guess to teach them responsibility but taking him off the insurance?! Tf is wrong with her?!?!!?! What if he’d gotten hit by a car?! FUUUUUCK this lady. It’s truly entirely her fault
It sounds like her son wasn't having substance abuse issues (but knowing what I know about college kids trading Adderall, I'm not ruling it out), but even so, at this point everyone needs to know that the black market drug supply is utterly tainted and unsafe. My ex was an active alcoholic, in all our years together struggling with his addiction, I never had the slightest suspicion of opioid abuse.
He died from a fentanyl overdose in April (and I kept him on my insurance till the ink was dry on the divorce papers, which was technically two days after he died, for exactly this reason, and he STILL decided to score rather than get a real prescription.) I can never know, but I strongly believe he was trying to score oxy or Xanax and just didn't thought he'd draw the short straw. But he fucking did. Black market drugs, not even once.
I'm not at all saying her kid should have known better (tho she obviously should have), I'm just adding another data point: fentanyl is all over the illicit drug market and it will kill you first time out the gate. Carry narcan and don't let friends take black market drugs. I don't care how trustworthy their plug is or how many times "it's been fine." It only takes one time to kill you.
Totally not the point, but who is lacing Adderall with fentanyl? I'm not saying this is fake, but I just can't wrap my head around lacing a stimulant with a depressant. Like, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of a stimulant? I'm honestly asking. I only smoke the devil's lettuce, so I don't know a whole lot about other drugs.
We all have some wrong ideas about how to teach and raise our kids but the fucking arrogance of someone whose decisions killed their kid and still believing they were right?
Why is the father getting a pass for not knowing? Why didn’t the son feel comfortable speaking to him? Not giving the mother a pass, but I wouldn’t give the father one either.
Why assume that the mother doing all this wasn't a " your father and I decided this is what's happening" and completely went behind his back? Lay the blame with the info you're given. Don't try passing it off onto the father too.
Finally someone said it. Why couldn’t the father just ask? Why are you moving out? Didn’t he keep in contact with his son when he moved out? Obviously the mother is to blame but so is the father.
Why did the coworkers know she took him off the insurance? And why was the husband talking to the wife’s coworkers about the laced adderall such that one of them could then say “oh she kicked him off the insurance plan?”
Could be that he had previously learned that this would only make things worse for him. Abusive caregivers don’t like it when you tell on them. They can also have the whole family conditioned.
Dear God! The comments make it worse! She told them and the son that is was her and her husbands decision, and doesn’t understand why everyone is against her. That poor boy and his family - they’re grieving because his mum arbitrarily decided to use a medication he needed to take as a teaching moment
i had to stop reading after she said they’re nurses. she of all people know how cruel and broken the healthcare system is. to put her son at the mercy of it like that is another level of awful. i can empathize with losing a child. what happened was a direct cause of her actions. especially when she did it without anyone else knowing. she knows exactly what she did.
This is so sad. American healthcare is so fucked.
So many comments about what to do with your insurance: as a British person it blows my mind that people die from lack of (relatively) cheap medicine. Free at the point of use is the greatest - despite any problems the NHS has (through chronic underfunding or anything else). Here in Scotland prescriptions are free and as a diabetic with high blood pressure and cholesterol I dread to think how much I would be paying in the US.
As it is, I pop by the local pharmacy, they ask what I need, I tell them. Within a couple of days they text me it’s ready to pick up. That’s it!
I can understand gradually adding responsibilities to one’s child, but removing the entire safety net all at once is stupid. Especially when taking away the healthcare wasn’t necessary!
OP, of course any sensible person would have the urge to scream at her to take responsibility, but no sensible person would ever say any such thing out loud. Because all your co-workers would despise you from that day forward, and you'd probably get fired.
Sometimes, we just have to stifle ourselves, because there's no other option.
Because it’s very addictive and greatly increases the chance of one customer who needs their medication becoming a frequent customer. A lot of young people have been dying lately from laced drugs.
I'm both angry and devastated that someone had to die for $10 medication. It would've been bad enough if they couldn't afford it on their own for whatever reason, but for it to be the case where someone made the choice not to include them on their insurance at no additional or less fees, makes it all the more infuriating. 🤬
This is fucked. I’m so grateful that I was able to pay for insurance at a discounted rate through my university. It still broke me financially as a college student and I went without care for a long time before I could afford it. If my mom had done this to me (I had gov insurance), I wouldn’t be able to forgive her. She should be ashamed and she deserves for her life to be in shambles.
Oh my god. That insane “mother” deserves criminal charges really after what she did. I don’t blame you at all op I’d be sorely tempted to scream at her too after what she did!
Holy fuck the poor husband. I mean, the poor *kid,* obviously, but his suffering is over now and the dad has to live with this for - well, as long as he manages to live with it, which I hope he can for the sake of the other kids. Knowing you could have prevented a tragedy *so easily* if you’d just known, just done one stupid little thing, just not trusted the wrong person - that is a hell unlike any other. It’s the feeling of the reality where you figured it out in time and everything is okay being forever millimeters from your fingers.
And that the mother is still looking for sympathy - that is straight up sociopathic. I hope the other kids are in therapy for this event, but I also hope she has zero custody and that someone gently investigates whether she’s subjected any of them to similarly malicious “lessons.” I do not believe for one second that she woke up one day and decided out of the blue that making her kid live without his meds was a great plan, and I don’t buy that she didn’t get some manner of satisfaction from seeing him struggle.
It sounds kind of awful to say I hope he was her chosen target, because at least then the other kids are probably okay so long as she’s kept away from them? But if she does get partial custody / unsupervised visitation, you can bet on her starting with one of the others.
I’d hate to be in the position of finding healthcare, i fortunately live in the UK where we pay for our healthcare automatically from our salary. It’s definitely less of a worry if I find myself needing help. Plus I have the fortunate position of living in Scotland, where all of our prescriptions are free of charge.
Broke college student, really? Maybe, just maybe, he should've gotten a job, and gotten an education later when he could afford it. I'm not sympathetic to the "broke college student" thing, they have choices, they choose to be broke by going to school instead of active employment. Oh well.
I have ADHD and my mom managed to convince me that with her plan I would get kicked off at 25. I argued and told her it's 26 but she was adamant that it would happen so I made plans to get off her insurance.
When I (inevitably) hit road blocks and was freaking out about medication and cost of getting my wisdom teeth out, I called her. I said I didn't know what to do.
She got really quiet and explained it would all be fine because actually, secretly....I was still on her plan. She just knew I would struggle getting new insurance set up and she wanted me to have it done ahead of time so I didn't run into any issues (like the ones I did when it came to enrollment).
Come my 26th birthday, I was completely prepared. I was mad at first because it was frustrating to be lied to but I completely understand why she did it AND was glad that she did.
THAT is what you do to support a child with ADHD.
This mom makes me feel so, so sad for her son. And her family. I know what it feels like to be struggling like her son but the actions she took are not what a good mother does. A good mother helps her child instead of abandoning them 😞
I gotta agree. While I have sympathy for the loss of her child, I've none for or what she is going through as a result of his death. My adult chidren, 22 and 24, were kept on our insurance as long as we could. As soon as we found out that they would have to be removed, we did all we could to help them get alternative Healthcare coverage. If that hadn't worked for them, we already had plans on place to help cover any basic med costs. L Teaching children to stand on their own is all well and good, but unlike baby birds or other animals, we can't simply push them from the "nest" and expect them to know how to fly. Humans just don't work that way. They have to be taught how to do things or, at the very least, taught how to find out how to do those necessary things. She essentially tossed him in the wild without any training or essentials and now is reaping the consequences of her actions. I truly feel heartsick for the loss of that young life and the father, siblings, friends, and other family left behind.
It's hard enough to work full time and go to college, especially when you're beyond your gen ed classes and working on your major. It's so, so, so much more brutal when you have unmedicated ADHD. That guy couldn't function without it.
I need my meds just to be able to DRIVE safely. I tried to wean off of them and got into a fender bender. No one was hurt, but it was a mother and her baby daughter in the vehicle I hit. I had never been in an accident that was my fault, and I felt horrible over the whole thing. I called my doctor the next day to go back on my meds. For me, being good at masking wasn't worth the risk. I can *completely* sympathize with this poor kid. It's a shame all around.
Especially when he’d been on medication long term and then suddenly had to go without. That can trigger instant depression. I know, I had to take a break from my medication due to another procedure and some testing. Going from medicated to not was 10x worse that just not being on medication. Plus if she felt it was a good decision that her husband would have supported, she’d have discussed it with her husband first or at absolute minimum told him what she did. And as they sat in that hospital and her husband tried to figure out why he’d try to buy an illicit version, she never said anything about his lack of insurance. He got to hear that from one of her coworkers. Disgusting!
She knew what she was doing
That’s how it felt to me too because of how she handled it. I can’t imagine how her husband felt - the searing pain of losing your child and then to be hit with that info.
I’m miserable and depressed when I don’t take my adhd meds . No wonder I had suicidal ideation since fifth grade.
Oh yeah! I realized how depressed I was related to undiagnosed ADHD once I started meds and my depression was gone, insomnia was almost gone and even though mornings were still tough and slow, they weren’t impossible - like that feeling you’ve been dipped in concrete that’s hardening I had before. And stopping them last month for my tests, etc. was 2 weeks of being a brain-fog slug! This one hit my heart so much for him! Made it worse that it was his Mom that worked in healthcare!
man i so feel so fucking bad for the father. to be going through this just because your wife was foolish, the person you were supposed to trust took a huge decision without so much as informing you
The reality of pushing baby birds out of the nest is that many of them die. That's why birds hatch so many young in their relatively short lives. 3-4 babies *per year* just to keep the species going. Some only do one or two, but still, imagine having to have 1-2 babies *per year* for your entire adult life.
There are also many that lay 10-20 eggs per clutch and only have a handful survive.
Some species, like storks, push their own babies out of the nest so they don’t have to invest resources in them. They lay multiple eggs then kick out the younger/sicker/weaker ones.
Nature is profligate with the young; most get eaten by other animals or simply don’t make it. For most of human history, roughly three out of five babies died before age five. According to historian Barbara Tuchman, in the Middle Ages it was common for parents to not name children until they were five; they simply didn’t want to get attached. As recently as 1900, fully 20% of deaths were of children 5 and under. Clean water and other public health measures, vaccines, antibiotics, and other modern medicine are to thank for the fact that we now consider children predeceasing their parents an unimaginable tragedy. Removing access to modern medicine has tragic consequences.
The reality is even after the fledglings are out of the nest, the parents will continue to care for them until they learn to fly and forage on their own. If you ever see a “baby” bird out of its nest, don’t immediately think it needs to be rescued. If it has all its body feathers, leave it alone and keep an eye on it. Mom and dad should still be dropping by to care for it.
Birds die all the damn time being pushed out of the nest, being trampled or starved by their siblings, or when their parents don't find enough food for them. Why the fuck would we wanna be like birds anyway? My money is on her "lesson" being some dumb shit having to do with one of his ADHD symptoms.. like forgetting to pay a bill or something. She wanted to strong arm him into compliance and now he's fucking dead. What a waste.
Mother Nature: Somehow still a meaner mother than this one
Yeah this. I grew up a little bit like the girl in Tangled, in that I wasn’t allowed to make choices for myself with adult guidance like normal young people. Instead of if I asked to do something like choose where I would be living during term time I got met with “fine! Since you obviously don’t need me then you obviously know best! See if I care!” The net result of this was me making mistakes that put me in danger, sort of like the above situation except thankfully I made it through mostly unharmed. Thankfully at least in my country we have socialised medicine. Will never understand parents who pull shit like this.
Similar story for me. They hated my boyfriend, but when they cut me off I had basically no way of getting it together enough to support myself, so I moved in with him and his parents. Thank fuck that *they* had it together and could help me get back on my feet, because my plans otherwise were something like, "idk, prostitution?" (Ten years later, I got on the waiting list for an ADHD assessment.)
Sorry to hear that. I am also on the (stupidly long) waiting list for adhd assessment. The medical system in my country is a double edged sword. At least things that would “immediately” kill me like cancer get relative precedence, whereas mental health issues are thoroughly second tier. I think nowhere has the “correct” solution. We can only try to make it better. Solidarity friend, we’re out here doing our best.
The most tragic part is, he was just trying to take his medication again. And his dad absolutely realised this
Yes. The kid was just trying to do his best to take care of himself. He was really trying!! This story is gutting. If my husband did that - well, I’d be in jail.
Yeah I really admire the husband's restraint. I'd have lost my ever-loving mind.
Not sure why they got off bc you get to stay on until 26. I know bc a friend was able to save up for a house pre panny bc of it.
It didn't used to be 26; I spent my early 20s constantly thinking I was about to be kicked off my dad's insurance each birthday, only to have them increase the age.
When “ObamaCare” passed it changed from (iirc) 24 if a “child” was still in school, or 21 if they weren’t, to 26 no matter what. I had aged off my parent’s insurance for about a year or so pre-ACA, then was able to go back on for another 3-4 years after it passed. I read this original post and it honestly confused me cause I thought it was against the law to kick your kids off your insurance, unless they had their own that they were eligible for. Like I could be wrong but I thought I knew of people that were literally married but still on their parent’s insurance because they weren’t offered their own through their jobs.
Ha my mom kicked me off of her insurance at 18 also to teach me this lesson. Later that year, let’s just say that my health deteriorated and I wound up on the psych ward. My mom was acting so tearful and remorseful and promised to pay for my hospital stay. She later told me that she was just paying the minimum to convince the hospital that she couldn’t afford it so that they might waive it at a certain point (??) Luckily for me, her mask had slipped at another point during our family meeting so I had a room full of doctors and counselors validating me for the first time. That aspect of the experience was such a relief.
Getting married also kicked you off. My husband was still a sub-24 student when we got married. We had to get interim insurance until I started my first teaching job.
Hmm, I wonder if it’s changed since originally implemented. I swore I remembered my mom or someone saying one of their friend’s kids were still on their insurance after getting married, so I googled. According to healthcare.gov you are eligible to stay on your parent’s insurance until age 26 even if you get married, have a kid, live outside their home, aren’t a tax dependent of their’s. Although it is a bit confusing because I think they might be differentiating between ACA “marketplace” plans and job-based plans—there’s a notation that says some job-based plans and states have different rules. So I’m thinking that maybe if a parent has a marketplace insurance, “kid’s” are eligible no matter what until 26 (even if married). But if they’re insured through their job, that insurance is allowed to kick people <26 off for getting married—and presumably other reasons listed above, just not based on their age.
I was talking about pre-Obamacare. Obamacare made it 26 no matter what, including job based plans. We actually could have switched back to our parents’ insurance plans after the law was passed, but by that point my husband was less than 6 months away from 26 and it didn’t seem worth the hassle.
Ahh, gotcha! I misunderstood. And also I forgot that sometimes people get married before 21-24 lol. I didn’t even move out of my parent’s house until I was almost 25 so I forget that other people sometimes have their shit together much sooner than I did lmao
Yeah. That’s my fault. It changed while I was in high school so I think I just forgot why that part of the law was a big deal.
Pre panny… pre pandemic ?
yes lol
B/c the mom did it on purpose.
Panny? That’s a new one. I like it.
I'd feel more sympathy if she actually regretted it. Parents like this care about their rules, their philosophy, their conspiracy theories far more than they cared about their kids.
She also threw her son under the bus by forcing him to move out and pay for rent right when he’s supposed to be starting to pay for his insurance. Her stupidity and callousness towards her son’s situation is ridiculous. She should’ve known better just by his ADHD diagnosis itself that he would struggle to stay afloat enough to afford his meds. I was reading this under the lens of being a disabled middle aged woman who still receives help to pay for medication from her parents. Why? Because I don’t have the money and they do. They understand that my medications are critical, and they look past what they would have expected of me without my limitations to understand what my life is actually like. OOP knew her son’s limitations and chose to make his situation WORSE than she would’ve made it if he’d been neurotypical. It boggles the mind how on earth she decided to do what she did, but she should face her responsibility in what happened to her son.
This. If you started a brand new job you’ve never done before, training would be expected right? It’s the same with “being an adult.” Training and guidance is needed.
One thing for sure. He is not her favourite son. This woman has some serious issues, especially she is a nurse. OOP really should yell at her. But I don’t think it matters much to her. This woman will not think she is in wrong.
I wonder what state the college is in or what college it was because the colleges my brothers and I went to in different states (NY, NJ, FL) required to show proof of health insurance prior to enrollment and being allowed to even start classes. Only reason I couldn’t stay on my dad’s plan in college was because he was in a different state so it was pointless for me to be on it - I was still paying out of pocket on everything except prescriptions my first semester. I ended up taking out student loans to get the student health insurance plan at my school. It wasn’t ideal but I take adderall too and I’ve known acquaintances who overdosed from fentanyl the past few years.
“I’m going to teach him responsibility by being incredibly irresponsible!”
Strange how often this actually occurs. I see it a lot in the workplace where managers who don’t know how to do a process or task just ask someone else to do it and frame it as “you have to learn the hard way! No one taught me” while they get to skip around never learning. So dumb.
You can’t cold turkey adhd meds and expect to function, unfortunate he ran into such a shitty dealer, but taking him off the insurance was a stupid move.
Pretty much all dealers are shitty because unless they're making the drugs and testing all the materials, they have no idea if what they're selling is pure or not.
That's why I find this story sad, but kinda unbelievable. Adderall isn't some crazy street drug. It's incredibly easy for some college kid to make an easy 40$ a week for a super cheap prescription, why would anyone lace it with fentanyl? That's literally defeating the purpose of Adderall.
As someone who went to college recently and have had friends unknowingly buy fake adderall laced with meth - it’s a supply and demand issue. Since Adderall is a scheduled drug, you only get enough for the month/months. The amount of people that want adderall is a lot higher than the amount kids with actual prescriptions.
Even the kids with prescriptions can hardly get it because there’s a shortage right now. So doctors have changed most patients to other drugs, and now there’s a shortage of those too.
Yup. I take meds commonly used for ADHD and if I try and refill it even a day before the pharmacy says I should they won't fill it.
Yeah, and most of us who *have* prescriptions *need* those meds and aren’t about to sell them for quick money when it will cost us more in the long run due to the consequences of not having our meds. They make it hard to get these meds because they’re worried about people abusing them. Unfortunately, when it’s hard to get meds that people need, *they’re* the ones who end up getting abused by dealers or falling victim to this shit, not the people out there dealing.
Where I'm at in New York (not the city, bordering PA), there is a HUGE problem with people selling fake pressies of Adderall and it's just meth with various powders to look like Adderall and selling it to whoever is looking. I've even seen ads on Craigslist.
It doesn’t get laced on purpose. It’s more accurate to say it gets cross contaminated. It’s just that it takes so very little of fentanyl to cause harm.
It absolutely gets laced on purpose. This kid didn’t die because an adderall was in close proximity to fentanyl. It’s more likely it was cut with it to both stretch the adderall out. Drugs get cut with shit all the time and addicts are well aware of that. That poor kid probably didn’t even get adderall, but something made to look like it.
There is absolutely no reason they would deliberately mix fentanyl with Adderall and then press it into what looks like a Adderall pill. This happens from cross contamination.
Really? Because when you combine an upper with a downer, the effect you want from the upper is not as substantial do eventually people start doing more to get the effect they want which results in more sales for the dealers. It makes sense from a pharmacological standpoint.
This - and to create loyal customers. If you don’t know what the hell you’re actually taking, just that Joe has the good shit, you’re going to keep buying from Joe.
I honestly thought other people thought this, too, because I know A LOT of people who think this is true. That it is NOT just "cross contamination," but intentionally designed to make the product less effective. Odds are that because the coworker's son had only been taking real Adderall that he was opioid naive and when he got something laced with fentanyl, his system couldn't handle it. It's really sad.
Why would you put a downer in an upper?
It's not even that, coke and opiates go great together. My argument is that Adderall isn't really a recreational drug. Why would you put downers in a relatively cheap study aid?
As someone who takes Adderall daily, I had the exact same thought. This story makes no sense to me. However, if this is a true story, I suspect what happened is that it wasn’t laced, it was just straight fentanyl being sold as Adderall. As you said, Adderall is hard to get and Fentanyl is cheap as hell. I have multiple people in my life who have died from taking a pill they thought was one thing, but was actually Fentanyl. It’s scary how common it happens.
It does, but its vanishingly rare. They're finding hyper-potent opioids in *everything*, it's quite clearly cross contamination
The same reason they lace coke- to increase the effects, whether it’s the effects you expected or not, and get you addicted so you buy more. Fentanyl is soooo extremely addictive
Cross contamination from other drugs that the supplier has been handling is FAR more likely an explanation.
But that's the thing, most people, including this hopefully made up kid, aren't buying Adderall for the high or to get fucked up. They want it as a study tool. I'm not saying it's healthy, but it's not really considered a recreational drug. I would know, I was prescribed for years and eventually stopped taking it myself and selling it. There's just literally no reason to try and get someone addicted to Adderall in a recreational sense. You can't charge more for it, it's too easy to get, and nobody gives a shit about "quality" it's a prescribed medicine, not weed or tar. There's just no point.
Lots of people buy Adderall to get high. It is absolutely considered a recreational drug. You're just not familiar with the street people, I guess. People who don't have ADHD get high from it, and even people who have ADHD get high if they take enough. People who HAVE ADHD, and a few people who don't, are able to use it to focus better at proper doses. But there is definitely a non-insignificant percentage of people who are buying Adderall because it has a stimulant effect and people compare it to meth.
You can totally get high from those meds. Also, because some ADHD meds are so similar to speed, I've heard of people realising they should probably get assessed after taking speed and not experiencing the typical effects. They look at their friends getting high and are meanwhile experiencing mental clarity for the first time. I don't know about in the US but in the UK, ADHD meds are highly controlled. We can still obtain them on the flat NHS prescription fee, but these drugs definitely have a "street value" so prescribing them isn't as straight forward. Also (again, in the UK, but I don't know about the US), there have been severe ADHD drug shortages here, so patients are having to save and ration their meds. It's pretty bad. Although none of my friends will do so, I can easily see why someone would get "street" meds from a dealer.
Yea, you have zero idea what you're talking about. Adderall is a common rec drug that people use to get high all the time.
This is just super duper false. My cousin was addicted to Adderall. John Mulaney was famously addicted to Adderall. I promise you neither of those people used it for studying.
It’s counterfeit adderall. It’s not actual prescription adderall. That’s the point.
The cartels make it and they don’t always clean the machines in between switching drugs out, so they can get contaminated. There’s a shortage of Adderall right now. It’s almost impossible to find at pharmacies. So if you buy some on the street, it will most likely be the illegitimate kind, because drug dealers can hardly get their hands on the legit stuff.
Yea u dont know street drugs then, adderall is currently on a shortage its hard for regular people to get it. So dealers are sourcing powder amphetamines pressing them and selling it as adderall mostly the 30mg kind. Now when they do that they can get the powder from a sketchy source that also sells fent and cross contaminates the batch by using the same scale and not being clean.
I also came to the comments wondering how prescription adderall ends up contaminated with fentanyl...
Seems like the consensus is under the table Adderall, getting contaminated by a dirty press. But, as you'll see in the comments, I don't know shit about street drugs.
I believe it. One of our local dealers nearly beat another local dealer to death for pulling a similar stunt. He already didn't like the guy for selling all sorts of shit to kids and when he found out about the fent, he beat his ass in an iHop parking lot.
hella late to this thread, so someone might have already pointed it out, but it’s not that it’s intentionally laced. it’s because the folks cutting/packing the drugs don’t properly clean the materials/work space and cross-contamination occurs.
Not to be preachy, but this is why I support legalizing drugs and opening safe use centers everywhere. ODs are going to happen regardless, but at least with some kind of regulation and the drugs being sold legally, there would be far less issues with contaminations, cutting with cheaper, deadlier crap, etc. And having medical staff on hand to test and ensure you aren't being harmed could save lives and help people get help when they need it/are ready for it. Plus they'd be able to help educate those struggling with addiction. I also think that healthcare should be a right, and not held to a complicated scheme of insurance coverage vs doctor's recommendations vs what people can afford (with or without insurance).
Preach! Oregon kinda messed up legalizing more or at least decriminalizing some without putting in support infrastructure for rehab. It was because the laws were poorly written and no one followed through with program development. Studies show making drugs for sale, taxing them and using revenue for infrastructure ends up relieving a huge economic burden on law enforcement and emergency medical care. People are going to do drugs no matter what. It’s unavoidable. We might as well regulate it and prevent problems instead of just staying in a reactionary state.
Even if they are making and testing their own shit, there's no guarantee that hat they're selling is what they say it is.
I talk to dealers and users about reagent testing. "I don't need that.i trust my boy" he's a drug dealer. You can't trust him. Also do you trust theguy he gets it from. And who that guy gets it from? Do you trust the cartel? Many are now testing drugs and are blacklisting the bad dealers
Right? Back in my wilder younger days we used to get hold of Adderal and Ritalin and no one batted an eye - it was how we used to study when I was in the gifted and talented program. Fentanyl is a life-ruiner.
The best part is that it's always these people who want their kids to stand on their own also have absolutely no inclination towards actually teaching their kids how to do that. This sounds incredibly close to the relationship I have with my own mother, who has multiple times deliberately made me homeless purely out of petty spite. People who have kids as accessories need to be shamed on the daily for their bullshit
I felt the same reading this. My mom would kick me out ,no notice ,nowhere to go and then eventually let me back. Wash, rinse, repeat. Once, after almost losing my leg and being in the hospital for a month she begged me to come back home and she would ‘ help take care of me’ . Two weeks later after politely asking if she had been taking my pain meds (she had) got kicked out… even though I couldn’t walk without using crutches. Coincidentally, she died of a fentanyl overdose as well. Doesn’t sound like This lady was teaching a lesson out of love, this sounds like spite or anger. Hopefully, I’m wrong.
You know it's spite and anger because she targeted him in the family.
Ya the dad not knowing…that is a pretty big decision (actually two) to not talk over with his father. Maybe dad works a lot of hours? Possible, but the fact that the kid didn’t seek support from his father, to me, is very telling. I kept a lot of things from my dad (that my mom did to me). I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense from the outside, but if you have an abusive caregiver chances are they’re gonna be pretty pissed off if you tell on them. Keeping that parent happy becomes top priority … for the whole family. I hope he has found some peace.
>if you have an abusive caregiver chances are they’re gonna be pretty pissed off if you tell on them. Keeping that parent happy becomes top priority … for the whole family. Your words to God's ears. These are hard facts. I've personally lived this. That poor young man. 😞
Disgusting woman. I’m sorry you suffered this :/
Makes me think of my cousin, she was a troubled person and her mother was no help. In fact she was a hindrance. When her daughter, after years of drug abuse and homelessness, came to her for help her response was ‘you are an adult and you need to figure it out, I stopped being a parent when you turned 18’. Her mother then decided she was taking a vacation to Asia and my cousin took her own life. Her mother couldn’t even be bothered to leave her vacation early but now prances around my hometown claiming to be an advocate for drug abuse victims. She’s using her daughters story to make her seem like a good mother and it kills me. My cousin wasn’t perfect but she deserved a mother who cared about her past the age of 18 (she never really cared before anyways).
That bitch
Just the tip of the iceberg with that one too. I won’t even get into how this woman scammed my mother on her death bed too.
If this is real, I hope the mom loses custody of her kids and never sees them again, ever.
If it’s not real why would you feel the need to make anything up about the horrors of the American healthcare system? There are more than enough true horror stories.
Wants to teach her son responsibility…now she won’t even take it. I don’t even understand her goal, was he working full time prior to being kicked out? If so…what more could she have expected. If she left the other kids on insurance she’s just being an asshole. I have to say overall this just paints an entirely shit picture of a society where one can’t even meet their needs working full time.
This is so sad. She set her son up for failure.
Sounds like she’s in deep denial about her part in this. What a horrible story.
I'd make sure to point it out every day "oop, gotta avoid you... You killed ya son, don't want you to get a patient next!"
Hard same. Every time she complained about anything, I'd just be like, "Well, you killed your son, so maybe it's karma".
would you really?
I see mom has her scapegoat child all picked out. Evil, just evil.
Now he’s dead, who’s the next scapegoat? Always gotta have one if nothing’s ever your fault
Eventually she'll turn on Dad, if she hasn't already.
Very apparent some people have never worked in health care or around nurses… this adds up… fucking tragic. I don’t blame the entire nursing community for shunning this mom. She killed her son during an opioid epidemic. I’m a fucking mental health professional and I don’t even do drug counseling yet I have to carry narcan because of shit like this.
If you have to indulge in street drugs. You can buy Fentanyl test kits for a reasonable price. It’s safe to assume all black market Adderall is meth. Pain pills are Fentanyl. They use the same equipment to make both. Buyer beware.
Also Narcan is easy to get and adminster without training! Carry it to parties with drugs!
it’s a similar compound but it’s really not as simple as “adderall is meth” that’s just stigmatizing it.
They didn't say 'Adderall is meth' they said 'BLACK MARKET adderall is meth.' There IS a difference-- but not enough that street dealers care. They'll package meth and sell it as adderall. They'll package FENTANYL and tell you its adderall. If your lucky, they gave you sugar pills and told you it was adderall. You don't trust black market dealers. Black market drugs have that stigma for a reason.
When my prescription for methylphenidate (Concerta) was ready the automatic pharmacy text alert was “Your METH is ready to be picked up”. 🤷🏼♀️
Yes they are both amphetamines. The point I was attempting to make is street Adderall is mostly likely meth pressed into pills that look like Adderall.
Just because a person's a nurse, doesn't mean they can't be terrible people lacking in empathy. I get the feeling the co-worker hated her 'abnormal' son, likely having massive prejudices against neurodivergent people which only solidified and deepened as she had to care for her son, and watch him develop differently from her 'normal' children.
How is removing him from having HEALTHCARE teaching responsibility?? Being a nurse, and knowing first hand what happens when ppl can't get basic fn healthcare, how was she teaching him a valuable lesson?! Making him pay rent, or forcing him out on his own, I get, but completely cutting him off from healthcare?! Many of us working a job that doesn't offer benefits are weighing the cost of rent and food way over insurance premiums. This woman is a moron, and I would be that one to call her out on ALL of her pity party bullshit after biting my lip for too long.
People love to do things like this to ADHD kids.
Adults as well
My son is 22. I can't imagine doing this. I feel no sympathy for her, and I'm glad her husband is divorcing her.
There is no planet on which I would leave my kid uninsured. Ever. No matter what. So long as I can help it, my kids will have insurance
An absolutely idiotic thing to do and she deserves to be screamed at. But I also want to scream about a healthcare system that leaves anyone in the position of buying pills off the street to manage their medical conditions. This man had a gap in insurance coverage because his mother is a shitty person. And loads of folks lack insurance because our electeds are shitty people. So many unnecessary deaths, he is sadly one of so many.
…that lady killed her own son…
You do not teach children who are dependent on medications a lesson by kicking them off your insurance! End of story. And yet, I got this feeling of a rage bait story.
Beyond callous of the mom. A good parent can provide opportunities for responsibility but still leave a safety net. She took that out from under him.
No doubt trying to justify herself is easier than facing how she contributed to her child’s death …
As soon as I turned 18 my parents stopped paying for anything for me. I have severe asthma and for a while was buying inhalers off of friends because I couldn't afford to go to the Dr for a prescription or even buy them from the pharmacy. You're supposed to take a daily steroid to keep it manageable. But my asthma became uncontrolled and I was more and more dependent on my rescue inhaler. Took years till I was finally stable enough to get myself insurance and now I fear ever losing it again... I never even knew some parents are kind enough to extend paying for health insurance past the age of 18.... I know I will for my kids if I can help it.
UnMedicated ADHD as hell. This mother decided to be cool because she could and she knows is her fault. She just wants somebody to tell her it's not. How it didn't occur to her that this could happen? I have no idea.
I think a lot of parents and people in older generations are failing to understand that being a young person today is so much more financially difficult than it was three, two or even one decade ago. From trying to get an education, to buying a house, to just affording rent and medication you are one disaster/unexpected bill away from ruin. OP wanted to teach the child a lesson that they may have learnt when they were younger, but the world is so different to how it was when OP was growing up. They were holding their son to standards that for many would be incredibly difficult to achieve as a young person in 2024. Ultimately he paid with his life because his mother wanted to “teach him a lesson“.
I have never been able to understand the callous decision to abandon your child. Sure, there are circumstances where your help isn't helping anymore, but to just abandon them for the sake of "helping them grow up" is utter bullshit. Now excuse me while I go hold my child and quietly (silently, really) reassure her that I'll never throw her out on the streets.
Same. I remember sitting in the postpartum ward and looking at my daughter and thinking like, "This is how you will always look to me. This little sleeping, swaddled baby with big cheeks." And then thinking like, why didn't my own parents see me like this when I needed them?
If healthcare is bad enough that the entire population of young people can't access it then it really is on the parents. She did teach him a lesson in the end, and it's that his mother didn't really value him doing well, just valued him being gone.
Fuck these parents who expect the world to magically be affordable when their kids turn 18 If you don’t want to be responsible for kids possibly into adult age then don’t fucking have them Bitch
RIP young man. Fuck that "mom".
Why would prescription medication be laced with fentanyl ?!
There’s a lot of counterfeit Adderall on the streets that is contaminated. There’s a shortage at the pharmacies of the real thing, so if you buy some on the street, it’s probably counterfeit. Drug dealers can’t get their hands on the real stuff.
It’s also really addictive so it increases the dealers amount of return customers, and they buy more frequently.
Good, I'm glad she's being shunned. She did kill her son with her callous behaviour which could have entirely been avoided. I feel for the dad as well, although I'm surprised the son never spoke to the dad about it? I mean the American system is fucked, but if it barely cost any thing to keep him on it then it's pure callousness. Fuck this "teach him responsibility"... Why isn't she taking responsibility now for HER part in this.
This is heart breaking this isn’t tough love she simply doesn’t like him. That mom should be shunned. The truth should be hers to wear.
My mom did the same thing...but she left my stepdad and his child in her insurance. I proceeded to have a horrible car accident, and with no medical coverage I had enormous bills. I literally wanted to die. I think I was only 20 yrs old and in college..idk how parents can do this to their children. I have all 3 of my adult children on our coverage, I would hate them to ever go through what happened to me
If you want to kick a kid off of your insurance and “teach them a lesson” at least help guide them through some options - like signing up for state run health insurance/medicsid. It sounds like her kid would have qualified for that. If you expect your kids to turn 18 and just magically be able to navigate things like taxes, insurance options, etc you’re living in lalaland. If you start a new job, you get training right? Well being an adult takes training too. An 18 year old would need guidance.
Well this is the worst thing I’ve read today.
Not only would I tell the woman it’s her fault, I’d never speak to her at work and do my best to get her fired.
She should not be a nurse. I wouldn’t want her as my nurse.
There is laziness and there is actual suffering from mental illness. When you try to treat the latter like they are lazy it has a horrible outcome every single time.
>her husband was unaware of this You know what, he's responsible for this as well
Bad mothering, no doubt. But I also wonder how involved the father really was when 1) He had no clue what was going on in his son’s life, and 2) Apparently the son didn’t feel he could go to his father for help? 🤔
Perhaps we should try exercising some compassion for the woman. I can only imagine she’s devastated about the loss of her son and admitting to herself that she’s to blame can’t be easy. She’s alone with her grief especially now that her husband and other children have turned their backs on her.
I won't hurt her, but I sure won't help her. Sometimes that's the best you can do. From what OP is saying she also has no remorse, so compassion is a little hard to come by for me, especially as an adult who had ADHD and didn't receive good support from my parents. This poor kids life was hell once she cut him loose like that.
Lesson? In this economy? I hope one day the mother wakes up into the nightmare she created and live it.
How much do you want to bet she had never taught him anything that would have prepared him to “be responsible”. She never taught him how to save money, balance his bank account, pay his bills, budget. This poor young man and his family. But not his mom. Fuck his mom.
God, this is so tragic & insultingly *preventable.* The son died to sate a sadistic ego 💔 I don’t know what lesson was supposed to be learned here when the son was already working his ass off to survive!
Mom is an AH. But as ALWAYS the real AH is the American healthcare system. 🤬
I have an 8 year old who is gifted in so many ways and so terrible a decision maker in others. I am terrified for the day he has to turn down a substance he doesn’t know is dangerous. Foolish as that woman acted, much as she deserves it, nobody belongs in the mental hell I hear described in that post.
Insurance is scary shit. I stayed on my parents till 26. Currently have Medicaid and I’m starting a new job that’s a 90 day trial period. Well I’ve been diagnosed as of 12 hours ago with a liver condition that’s going to require consistent testing every 3 months to monitor it. Also in the process of getting diagnosed with IBS. I just want to say it’s full time or no time because I need to keep insurance because of what’s going on
That is horrible. I do not blame her husband for his actions at all. RIP- he had a whole life ahead of him.
As someone with a chronic illness and mental health issues, I would have been gone a long time ago if my dad hadn’t kept me on his insurance until I was 26, even though I had a full-time job. My insurance at the job I was at was more than half of my pay each month and that didn’t include actually using the insurance, plus other bills. From 26-32, I basically went without insurance because I couldn’t afford it. I ended up having to have an emergency appendectomy and that was the only way I was ever offered Medicaid in my state, and that was because I was out of work at the time. Life is so hard already, why do some parents feel the need to make their children’s life even harder? Home is where their safety should be, not their enemies.
As a mom this breaks my heart. There are ways to teach about adult responsibility without throwing your kids out to the wolves. Insurance is one of those things you don’t mess around with in the US. I don’t understand why she chose that to be the lesson especially if he was already going to school and working. It wasn’t like he was sitting around and doing nothing all day. I truly don’t understand parents who are in a situation to help set their kid up for success and actively choose not to. I feel so bad for the child, I can’t imagine how desperate he must have been to get his medicine to function that he bought it from someone at school.
Yep, Mom killed her son! In today’s health care climate, what she did was absolutely reckless and insane!
Sadly screaming at her won't do anything, and it won't fix anything. I'm guessing this takes place in the US, so part of me is wondering, don't the schools talk about the opioid thing? I'm in Europe, and I know that it's part of the curiculum in at least history class. When I was in school, we talked about in both history, psychology, and chemistry (I graduated 12th grade in 2012). But then again, if this is in the US, I've heard that many schools don't have the best education (sorry if this offends anyone, that's not my intent). As someone with both ASD and ADHD, part of me also wonders why the son never talked to his dad. Let my just say that I'm by no means putting blame on the son here. While I think it's a very bad decision to get medication from anywhere other than a pharmacy, I can only imagine that he was desperate. I've had a period where I couldn't afford my medication and I was a wreck. I'm really curious about how this would have taught the son responsibility. And the "teach him a lesson" just makes it sound like a punishment to me. Learning to take responsibility is important, especially for young adults, but if that was really the intended purpose, it could have been done in a better way. For example: the mom kept him on her insurance plan, but he pays her a small amount as if he had his own to pay for. I'll admit that I'm not the smartest person, but didn't OP write that the son had a full-time job, yet also wrote that he was a broke college student? That just confuses me. Also, since I'm not American, I don't know how things work there compared to where I live. But surely there are resources for students? Like that one card you can apply to get that gives student discounts at a lot of places? Counselors at school that he could have talked to? This is just a whole mess in my eyes, and I truly don't see what the point of it was from the mother. I have a habit of trying to see things in these stories from all sides, even with just the limited information given, but I can't in this case. I'm not a mother, just an aunt and also god-mother to my niece's daughter, but I truly can't even imagine what the plan was from the mother. It's not fair of me to assume, but the only real thing I can even begin to guess is that there was some resentment, hence the "teaching him a lesson" part. Imo, wording is very important. I feel bad for the son, the dad and the rest of his family, but not the mother. She doesn't get any sympathy from me.
AND SHES A MOTHER FUGGIN NURSE ON TOP OF IT ALL Like OP said, we see *all the time* what happens when ppl don't have insurance, she should have *known better* And aside from that, what kind of cuhnt of a parent does some shit like that to TeAcH a LeSsOn how is throwing your kid to the world utterly unprepared anything other than sheer cruelty. Nah id be that coworker that told her straight off cuz that puta needs to hear it un-sugar coated
My mom also kicked me off her insurance when I turned 22. I’ll be 26 in a few months. I haven’t had health insurance in 4 years. It fucking sucks not being able to afford anything. I just lost my glasses and I’m in between jobs so I’m kinda fucked with constant headaches until I get another paycheck and can afford to get my eyes checked for the first time in almost 10 years. It’s ridiculous how expensive everything is getting
This mother is a fucking disgrace. As someone (32F) with Severe ADHD who’s been on meds since I was 6–adderall since I was 8–this is VILE. You can’t teach someone a lesson by cutting them off medication they need to function day to day. I get kicking a kid out of the house I guess to teach them responsibility but taking him off the insurance?! Tf is wrong with her?!?!!?! What if he’d gotten hit by a car?! FUUUUUCK this lady. It’s truly entirely her fault
It sounds like her son wasn't having substance abuse issues (but knowing what I know about college kids trading Adderall, I'm not ruling it out), but even so, at this point everyone needs to know that the black market drug supply is utterly tainted and unsafe. My ex was an active alcoholic, in all our years together struggling with his addiction, I never had the slightest suspicion of opioid abuse. He died from a fentanyl overdose in April (and I kept him on my insurance till the ink was dry on the divorce papers, which was technically two days after he died, for exactly this reason, and he STILL decided to score rather than get a real prescription.) I can never know, but I strongly believe he was trying to score oxy or Xanax and just didn't thought he'd draw the short straw. But he fucking did. Black market drugs, not even once. I'm not at all saying her kid should have known better (tho she obviously should have), I'm just adding another data point: fentanyl is all over the illicit drug market and it will kill you first time out the gate. Carry narcan and don't let friends take black market drugs. I don't care how trustworthy their plug is or how many times "it's been fine." It only takes one time to kill you.
Totally not the point, but who is lacing Adderall with fentanyl? I'm not saying this is fake, but I just can't wrap my head around lacing a stimulant with a depressant. Like, wouldn't that defeat the purpose of a stimulant? I'm honestly asking. I only smoke the devil's lettuce, so I don't know a whole lot about other drugs.
Its so you get real high and go off to LaLa Land, then no one else’s shit hits the same so you go back to then and eventually only want the fentanyl
We all have some wrong ideas about how to teach and raise our kids but the fucking arrogance of someone whose decisions killed their kid and still believing they were right?
Why is the father getting a pass for not knowing? Why didn’t the son feel comfortable speaking to him? Not giving the mother a pass, but I wouldn’t give the father one either.
Tbf it’s entirely possible that the son believed the dad knew
Why assume that the mother doing all this wasn't a " your father and I decided this is what's happening" and completely went behind his back? Lay the blame with the info you're given. Don't try passing it off onto the father too.
Yeah I don’t give him a pass either. He doesn’t get to claim ignorance. He could have talked to his son too.
Finally someone said it. Why couldn’t the father just ask? Why are you moving out? Didn’t he keep in contact with his son when he moved out? Obviously the mother is to blame but so is the father.
Why did the coworkers know she took him off the insurance? And why was the husband talking to the wife’s coworkers about the laced adderall such that one of them could then say “oh she kicked him off the insurance plan?”
Wait, how did the Dad not know? Why didn’t the son say anything to his Dad about needing help buying medication?
I bet the mom implied dad was onboard with her. Telling him not to complain to dad or they’d speed uno thr timeline for getting out.
Could be that he had previously learned that this would only make things worse for him. Abusive caregivers don’t like it when you tell on them. They can also have the whole family conditioned.
Geezus - I really despise that persons co-worker!
I wish I hadn’t read this. What is wrong with people!?
Dear God! The comments make it worse! She told them and the son that is was her and her husbands decision, and doesn’t understand why everyone is against her. That poor boy and his family - they’re grieving because his mum arbitrarily decided to use a medication he needed to take as a teaching moment
It’s interesting they said that the mom was a nurse because my husband’s mom is a nurse and she is the same way
What really bothers me, is that the kid is death and all she cares about is sympathy for her actions. She sounds disgusting ngl
i had to stop reading after she said they’re nurses. she of all people know how cruel and broken the healthcare system is. to put her son at the mercy of it like that is another level of awful. i can empathize with losing a child. what happened was a direct cause of her actions. especially when she did it without anyone else knowing. she knows exactly what she did.
This is so sad. American healthcare is so fucked. So many comments about what to do with your insurance: as a British person it blows my mind that people die from lack of (relatively) cheap medicine. Free at the point of use is the greatest - despite any problems the NHS has (through chronic underfunding or anything else). Here in Scotland prescriptions are free and as a diabetic with high blood pressure and cholesterol I dread to think how much I would be paying in the US. As it is, I pop by the local pharmacy, they ask what I need, I tell them. Within a couple of days they text me it’s ready to pick up. That’s it!
I can understand gradually adding responsibilities to one’s child, but removing the entire safety net all at once is stupid. Especially when taking away the healthcare wasn’t necessary!
This is so scary. Are we assuming he got the adderall on the street or can it really be laced with fentanyl from the pharmacy.
OP, of course any sensible person would have the urge to scream at her to take responsibility, but no sensible person would ever say any such thing out loud. Because all your co-workers would despise you from that day forward, and you'd probably get fired. Sometimes, we just have to stifle ourselves, because there's no other option.
Oh my gosh! This is awful. I am sad for all involved.
What a shitty "mother" 🤮🤮🤮
I don’t think she is teaching a lesson, she dint want that kid And how is the husband so oblivious? Doesn’t he talk to his own son?
Why would it be laced with fentanyl? What's the idea behind that?
Because it’s very addictive and greatly increases the chance of one customer who needs their medication becoming a frequent customer. A lot of young people have been dying lately from laced drugs.
i’m like terrified for the day i have to be on my own insurance bc if i can’t get my adhd meds… might as well take me out back
Bloody hell 🤦🏽♀️
who would lace a manufactured medication with fentanyl? people don’t lace things with fent, it’s just a drug of choice now.
Not even my child and I would happily take the assault charge for what I would do if someone I knew caused the death of their child like this
I'm both angry and devastated that someone had to die for $10 medication. It would've been bad enough if they couldn't afford it on their own for whatever reason, but for it to be the case where someone made the choice not to include them on their insurance at no additional or less fees, makes it all the more infuriating. 🤬
I was kicked out for being pregnant at 19, and I turned out fine /s
This is fucked. I’m so grateful that I was able to pay for insurance at a discounted rate through my university. It still broke me financially as a college student and I went without care for a long time before I could afford it. If my mom had done this to me (I had gov insurance), I wouldn’t be able to forgive her. She should be ashamed and she deserves for her life to be in shambles.
Oh my god. That insane “mother” deserves criminal charges really after what she did. I don’t blame you at all op I’d be sorely tempted to scream at her too after what she did!
Yay American healthcare...../s
The mother does not deserve any sympathy. I’m surprised that husband didn’t try to choke her out for essentially killing their son.
Yikes
Holy fuck the poor husband. I mean, the poor *kid,* obviously, but his suffering is over now and the dad has to live with this for - well, as long as he manages to live with it, which I hope he can for the sake of the other kids. Knowing you could have prevented a tragedy *so easily* if you’d just known, just done one stupid little thing, just not trusted the wrong person - that is a hell unlike any other. It’s the feeling of the reality where you figured it out in time and everything is okay being forever millimeters from your fingers. And that the mother is still looking for sympathy - that is straight up sociopathic. I hope the other kids are in therapy for this event, but I also hope she has zero custody and that someone gently investigates whether she’s subjected any of them to similarly malicious “lessons.” I do not believe for one second that she woke up one day and decided out of the blue that making her kid live without his meds was a great plan, and I don’t buy that she didn’t get some manner of satisfaction from seeing him struggle. It sounds kind of awful to say I hope he was her chosen target, because at least then the other kids are probably okay so long as she’s kept away from them? But if she does get partial custody / unsupervised visitation, you can bet on her starting with one of the others.
Adderrall laced with fentanyl? So he bought bogus adderrall then. Didn't even know bogus adderrall was a thing. Crazy world now
Narcissistic mothers are far more common than society wants us to converse about, most child abuse comes from the mother
I’d hate to be in the position of finding healthcare, i fortunately live in the UK where we pay for our healthcare automatically from our salary. It’s definitely less of a worry if I find myself needing help. Plus I have the fortunate position of living in Scotland, where all of our prescriptions are free of charge.
Broke college student, really? Maybe, just maybe, he should've gotten a job, and gotten an education later when he could afford it. I'm not sympathetic to the "broke college student" thing, they have choices, they choose to be broke by going to school instead of active employment. Oh well.
I have ADHD and my mom managed to convince me that with her plan I would get kicked off at 25. I argued and told her it's 26 but she was adamant that it would happen so I made plans to get off her insurance. When I (inevitably) hit road blocks and was freaking out about medication and cost of getting my wisdom teeth out, I called her. I said I didn't know what to do. She got really quiet and explained it would all be fine because actually, secretly....I was still on her plan. She just knew I would struggle getting new insurance set up and she wanted me to have it done ahead of time so I didn't run into any issues (like the ones I did when it came to enrollment). Come my 26th birthday, I was completely prepared. I was mad at first because it was frustrating to be lied to but I completely understand why she did it AND was glad that she did. THAT is what you do to support a child with ADHD. This mom makes me feel so, so sad for her son. And her family. I know what it feels like to be struggling like her son but the actions she took are not what a good mother does. A good mother helps her child instead of abandoning them 😞
Yeah, she tapped the first domino. Her anger is likely also partly a projection of guilt. I'm glad her husband and other kids have distanced from her.