I understand self-medicating with alcohol and for me drugs too. The problem I found with that is I stayed ill, ever repeating the same cycle of drinking a harmful substance to fix a dire condition. It just dose not make sense.

I eventually ran into additional emotional problems on top of the ones that were my mental illness because of drinking. Drinking made my depression worse so I drank more to fix that. With more drinking, this caused me physical problems such as tissue damage to my liver. That made me even more depressed.

I stayed sick for a long time. Then came a day that I knew that I needed to change. I sought out help and learned how to develop a dual-diagnosis treatment plan. That was the beginning out of substance abuse/dependance to sobriety and better mental health.