[Bahamadness]

My husband says that if the medication does not resolve my bipolar, cutting, suicidal thoughts, and alcohol addiction, he will have me institutionalized. This sounds very scary. Has any had to go to rehab?

[splitimage]

First off it's pretty hard to have anyone institutionalized against their will. Most places require a court order or at least the signature of two psychiciatrists.

That being said, I've been in rehab twice and a psych hospital once. Addiction to alcohol and mental illness are two different problems, although they do feed off each other.

Re rehab for alcohol addiction. Like I've said I did it twice. I was in patient for 28 days once. Wasn't scary at all. the facility was actually quite nice and we had lots of group therapy and AA meetings every day. The second rehab I did, was a better fit for me, because it also addressed mental illness, was outpatient - 4 days a week for 10 weeks. I loved it.

I went IP to a psych hospital voluntarily last summer for 7 weeks to deal with depression, SU thoughts and self harm, that were all exacerbated by my getting sober. It was really scary at first but wound up being a really good experience and exactly what I needed. We had group therapy, lots of opportunity for exercise, I saw my psychiatrist every day, and got my meds adjusted. It was also just a good chance to focus on nothing but myself.

In my experience meds alone won't help with an alcohol problem, if you have one. Rehab is one way to go. But if you really want to to stop check out AA as another alternative. I go to AA a couple of times a week and find they've been incredibly helpful.

Good luck.

--splitimage

[trippinmickey]

If you are bipolar rehab is going to work !The way the ten steps work is great for most people but not for the mentally ill infact I seen it make it worst for me and others I knew with bipolar .Well most people do the ten steps and slowly get better we get much worst which leads most people there to think we are still using .But in fact we are having to deal with are bipolar with out the help of drugs or drink .Plus most meds. take 6-8 weeks to start working and can take years to find the combo that work for you .

You need to work on your bipolar first or goto rehab that deals with both But they are getting hard to find there no money in dealing with the long term mentally ill so they been losing funding . I can tell you with me and other friends I made if you can get your bipolar under control stopping drugs and drink is the easy part .Meds don't work if you are using and once you get taste of sanity you wont want to risk the trip to hell again !

[Bahamadness]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. My doc and my family are really expecting me to pull through this. I don't live in the US so it would be extremely expensive to go to rehab. I will wait until the medication starts working and go from there.

Thanks again