Hi I'm Sam and I'm new to the forums. I started cutting myself when I was eleven and it was on and off and got worse and worse until I told my mom when I was 16. I think that telling made it stop helping me in the way it had for the years before. But then about a year and a half ago (when I was 19) I started to get very depressed and abused my psychiatric meds to feel something better and I would burn myself or occasionally cut or do other self-destructive things while I was high or drunk (and occasionally when I wasn't high or drunk as well). I still do this periodically. Is abusing drugs an expression of self-injury?

And I'm not sure if this is related to a specific disorder other than depression or not. My psychiatrist thinks I have a bipolar spectrum disorder (she knows about my self-injury and problems with depressive episodes and paranoia but not about abusing my meds) but I'm not sure about that. I'm just getting really frustrated with the state of my life and my mind right now and I'm kind of looking for answers. Thanks guys!