I think the line from the blog that said, "Maybe it’s best to think of “normal” as a range of life experiences where we can live the life we want, without significant health or mental health impediments. "

I am a psych patient as well as being a long time sober member of AA. In both realms I have heard people scoff alot at the concept of "normal" - that there is no such thing. But as a person that has life threatening mental illness as well as a life threating addiction (in remission because I do all the 12 step work and have done for 11 years) I disagree.

I think for me in relation to my conditions, "normal" is not wanting to take your own life every single day, month after month and year after year and then acting on it, niot being able to get out of bed, change clothses have a shoer, let alone go to work and all the massive loss that mental illness and for me, long-term mis-prescription can cause. This is simply NOT what the majority of population lives with. The old chestnut that EVERYONE thinks of suicide at least once in their life (which I believe is true) is simply SO irrelevent to a person who has conditions like mine and also, I am sure, many people on this site.

And as to addiction, I don't think it normal to drink a poison/or take a poison continually until your life is shattered and then until you die (I've seen so many in my family and also friends and of course people in AA). It's not what the population do, even if there is substance abuse, it is usually not in the form od abuse of the fully blown alcoholic that I am.

Of course because I have worked so hard on these conditions for so long, and have ultimately found a psychiatrist who prescribes me a proper meds mix I HAVE gained a semblence of "normailty" and greater functionality and I don't think about suicide every second of every day, and I don't plan or do the "act". And I don't drink alcohol, so I don't do the clearly "abnormal" behaviours of an 18 year blackout drunk.

But I still can't work (having had three qualification and a successful 14 years career), I am now on the Disability Support Pension which is very hard to get so I present to the Goverment as a person with terrible debilitating illness) I lost my home due to all this, I am profoundly isolated due to my illnesses and am not in contact with family and friends bar one friend, I won't have the chance to have kids because of all the years chewed up by all of this and I haven't been in a proper relationship for 15 years. There are many more losses along those lines.

Many people without mental illness or addiction are lacking in these areas too, but few have all of them, and to the same extent. If I looked a Bell Curve of all this disfunctions and various factors in life, I would definitely be on the flat end of the Bell Curve in terms of fucntionality amd life losses.

So I do think it is appropriate to use the term "normal" in terms of thr majority of people, who, of course have many things wrong, like fighting with a partner or other serious illness illnesses or problems at work. but not the life shattering nature of addiction and mental illness. I find it patronising when people say to me, but everybody has problems, no life is perfect. Of course that is true, but we are dealing with extremes here - not the middle of that Bell Curve where most people live.

This is an angry post I know, so I apologise, but it is clearly a "hot button" issue for me.