Dear Daughter,

Your addiction has effected me negatively in the following ways:

• You can’t sit down to a meal at our home or go to a restaurant without getting a fix.  We as a family should be able to dine together without you having to have a drink every time.  
• When you drink you act differently, most often a hyper sugar high, followed by a tear filled-crash.
• I can no longer watch you fumble and get frustrated with the plastic straw in the carton.
• I have seen you scream and throw your carton on the Barnes & Noble train table, splashing your drink all over the Thomas the Tank Engine.
• I find cartons in your car seat and by your high chair.
• Your addiction makes me feel like I am failing you as a mother if I don’t give you what you want.
• If you don’t get a drink you throw a fit and cry until you do.  As your mother, I can no longer listen to your wails for “chokate milk!”

I am here today asking you to get help.   I will no longer be an enabler.  I will not be the person who fuels your addiction any more.  I can’t stand by and watch you douse Thomas & Friends in a sugar-fueled rage.  I no longer will let you pick a carton from the Starbucks cooler thinking it is “just this once.”  I now know that Ovaltine is not any better, it just made me feel better to give it to you because it had “vitamins.”

Sometimes I blame myself because I breast fed you for a year and I have to think the only thing as delicious as my milk is chocolate milk.

Please accept the gift of help we are offering you today.  We are now a “dry” home, free of sugar laced milk.  You will now only drink plain milk and water.  I know sometimes they give you juice at school and I can live with that, but we will no longer have chocolate milk in our house.

I love you and I want what is best for your teeth and our sanity as a family.

Love,

Mama

P.S. If this is ever really for drugs and not a tongue-in-cheek blog post, I will drag your butt to rehab.  If you refuse, I will send you to jail because I’m not putting up with that crap.  Consider chocolate milk your warning.