ArcaMax

Unfortunately, you may not be able to mend your torn family. Parenting at this point for your challenging younger daughters may mean establishing firm boundaries and supporting recovery, but not enabling addiction. You may have to train yourselves and your other children to learn how to lovingly detach from them. Therapy at this point should focus on your own coping skills, as well as exploring concepts such as codependency.

Charles Rubin has written a tough, searing book based on his own experience being the parent of addicted children: "Don't Let Your Kids Kill You: A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children." New Century Publishers (2007).

When I interviewed Mr. Rubin about his book, he told me that his own experience led him, finally, to focus not on his failed, futile and frustrating efforts to save his adult children from their addictions but on saving himself.

It might be time for you to surrender to your own powerlessness over your daughters' addiction, and make a choice to focus on your own health and recovery.

Sometimes, pulling back or detaching can disrupt the dynamic enough to nudge troubled people toward taking responsibility for their own recovery. Other times, detaching will have no effect on the family members you are trying to help, but it will help you. And you and your other children living good and healthy lives is better than everyone going down with the ship.

Dear Amy: We recently put our home for sale. Our next-door neighbors are nice. We say hello that's about it. The problem is that their property is unkempt.

A pool in their yard collapsed years ago, and it's still laying in the yard, along with the broken and rotted decking that was around it.

The trim is coming off in some spots and missing in others.

Several potential buyers have asked if the house was abandoned, or if anyone lives there. We've been asked, "What's the story over there?"

I don't believe my neighbors are breaking any laws.

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