It went so fast! We had a fun and active 12-year-old with good friends in the street and on the handball team. The concern crept in when the handball court was replaced with the shopping centre, and old friends were replaced with new and older ones. The door to the children’s room was locked, money disappeared. Before we knew it, we had a 13-year-old with an untreated diagnosis from BUP, who was completely impossible to reach due to escalating drug problems. Arguing, acting out, breaking rules and boundaries, secrecy, unknown friends, unknown whereabouts, absence at night. And more and more intoxication. And to other parents reading this: We’ve tried everything! Yes, we confiscated the mobile phone and tried to control the child’s internet use. Yes, we have given house arrest. Yes, we have taken the child away from the environment for longer periods. No, we have not given pocket money. We have tried with trust and rewards, love and scolding, admonitions and understanding. We have collaborated with the school, BUP, police and external contact. We have accepted all possible low-threshold help, and child protection’s help measures in the home. We are perfectly normal parents, neither bad nor perfect. We have other children who don’t get high. We know it’s tempting to think that we did something wrong to end up in this situation, but the truth is that this can happen to anyone. There is a lot of addiction out there – and those affected are getting younger and younger. In the healthcare system, ROP is the abbreviation for co-occurring drug disorders and mental disorders. And you certainly have to shout loudly in this country, if you are unlucky enough to have an ROP disorder, or if you are a relative of someone with this type of complex challenges. You have to shout even louder if the sick person is under legal age and your own child. We wake up every day and find ourselves in the middle of every parent’s nightmare. And now we SHOUT: Can we stop asking if drug-addicted children want help? My child drinks himself to death, but no one can use coercion. If it was me who was addicted and pregnant with my child, then I would have been forcibly hospitalized and forcibly detoxed to protect the child. And if my child had had an eating disorder and not a substance abuse disorder, he could have been admitted to a youth center and force-fed, and then enter a course of treatment. But when my child chooses to get high, there is no one who can exercise any form of coercion. When it comes to ROP disorders in children and young people, all help is voluntary or based on consent. Of course, the child’s voice must be heard and emphasized from a certain age, but at the expense of life and health? BUP believes that substance abuse in the youngest is due to an underlying mental illness, and will investigate – if the child wants to. If the child is diagnosed with a mental disorder, medication can help keep the disorder in check – if the child wants to. The URO team at the university hospital we attend (Ung Rusoppdagelse) is ready to welcome the child and talk about substance abuse challenges – if the child wants to. When the drug use has been going on for some time and the young brain clearly shows signs of it, and the next of kin wonder if it could be a case of psychosis, they can call TOPS, a specialist team for the early detection of psychosis. They can say that the child must be drug-free for six weeks before they can assess whether any psychosis is underlying or drug-induced. So what happened to drug use in young people being due to underlying mental illness? Now it is suddenly the opposite. And a possible investigation is of course only possible if the child wants to. The police offer preventive talks – if the child wants. Criminal acts committed by children and young people under the age of 15 are dismissed, as the child is under the criminal minimum age. So children can freely sell, buy and use drugs in this country until they are 15 years old. And they do! In addition, there are new guidelines which state that possession of drugs for personal use shall not be punished if the user is addicted to drugs. So drug-addicted children and young people – including those over the criminal minimum age – can freely sell, buy and use drugs. They may be offered an interview with the police – if they want. All agencies boast of Utekontakten – they are very good at talking to children and young people about drugs – if the child wants to. But the child wants nothing more than to get high. Parents perish in their attempt to save their child. They barely sleep, are sick and disabled. The family suffers, the siblings suffer. And when they finally see that they have no more power and crawl to the cross and ask for more help from the child welfare agency, which is the only body that can exercise a certain form of coercion, it turns out that the measure that the child welfare agency can offer is to put it the drug-addicted child together with other drug-addicted children in an institution without locked doors or any possibility of treatment whatsoever. It is not the fault of the wonderful individuals who work in child protection, they have no other measures to resort to. The emergency institution offers the drug-addicted child bowling and cinema – if the child wants. They can confiscate the mobile phone and search the child, and they can try to hold the child back, but in practice the child can escape time and time again and become intoxicated, without them being able to do anything about it, because the threshold for the use of coercion is extremely high. And while the child acquires an ever-larger drug network and tests ever-stronger drugs, the case lies with the Bureau of Statistics, which manages the few institutional places that exist in this rich country. And that takes time. Procedures must be followed, and the caseworkers do not know our child and do not understand the urgency. Nor do they have locked doors to offer. We do not forcibly treat children in this country. And we don’t lock doors. Then we’d rather let the child drink themselves to death – if that’s what the child wants. Is this what you want, Kjersti Toppe and Ingvild Kjerkol? Can you hear me yelling? The entry is published anonymously for the sake of those affected. news knows the identity of the chronicler.
ttn-69
Right to get drunk to death – Speech
