[tapasia]

I'm new, and don't anyone here. So please don't think that I think any of you are shtoopit. But I keep reading these posts from people who are using. Jesus.

It is possible that there are people who can smoke pot, take acid, amphetamines, and lose their minds. I've known some who were okay with it. But if you are here, and I'm sure you are because you are reading this, none of those people are YOU.

I speak from experience. I did untold amounts of drugs for many many years. The difference is the same as between mildly neurotic and full-blown psychosis. If you have a mental illness and you do drugs you have no one to blame but yourself for how bad it has gotten.

I am not a psychiatrist. I am an ordinary person who is now disabled because of whatever mental condition I have. But here is what I think about me: my thoughts and feelings are pretty out of hand, and I'm pretty miserable a lot of the time. But my thoughts and feelings are just that, thoughts and feelings. It is when I indulge in weed or acid, or meth, my thoughts and feelings materialize and manifest themselves as my reality. Then I am out of control and dangerous to everyone, especially myself.

Here's the problem - it feels really good to be utterly out of my head. I love it, until the consequences kick in. I think that's what the docs call "addiction to mania" or something. And it's about the most selfish and inconsiderate thing I can do.

I don't think badly of anyone doing drugs. I fight the desire to do them everyday because I live with depression and want something, anything, to make it better. But, I feel genuine compassion and pity for not only the person doing the drugs, but especially for those people who have to live with this mentally ill person.

I do not believe in the absolute of "drugs are bad", but I know for a fact they are the worst thing possible for a person who already has to deal with mental illness.

I have a nasty habit of saying inappropiate things, and if this is one of them, forgive me and tell me.

[mlyn]

[Beautiful_Pain]

I don't use drugs, or alcohol...but during a couple stays in the hospital, substance usage was brought up and discussed by the MHU psychiatrist. For some people, substance usage/abuse is a form of self medication. For a very short while, it will make you feel 'stable', so many will keep using--many times more often or increase their intake as they build a tolerence to their substance of choice. In some cases it becomes an addiction, which in and of itself a problem, adds to the existing problem(s).

I don't think the blanket statement:

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
If you have a mental illness and you do drugs you have no one to blame but yourself for how bad it has gotten.

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is appropriate. People handle things differently, and turn to different things due to many factors...not just mental illness. But mental illness doesn't mean we WILL abuse substances, either. Some do, some don't...just like with the rest of the world 'out there'. Mental illness is no person's fault, even if the person has an addiction, too.