Oof.

Weed wildly varies. There are a million and three things that could happen depending on strain, strength, and situation. I won't say it's done anything awful, but it's just overall unpleasant now and with having to choose between something that might have formaldehyde or driving to MA or ME, it's not a thing anymore. Opioids of any kind were my "most successful" attempt at self-medicating I guess, but damn if I couldn't get any I'd freak. And then there's overdosing. That's not the greatest experience. Alcohol and opioids felt incredibly similar in that I know and after a point logically knew I was addicted and it was no good, but it just so powerfully felt like it was the only thing getting me through the day I wouldn't stop. Alcohol was this cycle of "I'm upset->couple shots and life is good->that startedd wearing off so more shots and now I wanna die->sleep" that lasts too long. Meth was more a physical compulsion to use it after I tried it. I ended up floridly psychotic on it for a long while. I "tried coke" once but I don't even know if it was coke. Other people had the same stuff and went bonkers, but I just kinda watched them trying to match their energy but I wasn't manic and actually was as calm as I ever was at that point (I'm convinced they had a placebo effect). Funny enough, hallucinogens (only tried salvia, lsd, shrooms, and dxm) never triggered any sort of psychosis. Salvia might have actually, that was forever ago. I "died" during my dxm trip and haven't been acutely suicidal since, so I guess there's that (I don't condone it as a treatment haha, I just was scared by the image of my cat becoming possessed because I made out with the devil).

I can't even say as an addict where the cause/effect and correlation of using and my bipolar symptoms is because when I do use practically anything I focus on that and disregard my state, but then at some point the state is a severe episode that can't be disregarded and now that's two things on my plate.

Does your state (or similar applicable term) have a daily status update on how many people on boarding in ERs waiting for a psych unit bed? (I found NHs today! It's 19 involuntary adults and 7 children. Don't know about voluntary.)