To Those With Mental Illness: Do You Have Problems With Alcohol and Drug Abuse in Your Family?
Question by ~~Birdy~~: To those with mental illness: Do you have problems with alcohol and drug abuse in your family?
Do you get concerned about yourself?
Do you ever think about drinking to change your mood? What stops you?
Best answer:
Answer by Van Bo
I’m concerned. Enough to know that alcohol is toxic, I don’t want to get wasted, sick or harm my health.
Answer by Meatwad Gets The Honeys
1. Yes. My father’s side has an alcoholic or two in the distant relatives but my mother’s side of the family? ALBINO-Drug Addicted-WHITE TRASH.
I’m actually ashamed FOR my father that he had such low standards as to “hit” that…
My mother’s side of the family only has one or two “Good” people… Out of the WHOLE family… The rest are drug/alcohol and/or mentally ill sacks of human waste that should be expunged from the planet for the good of the species.
My mother got hooked on booze and, more importantly, opiate medications because of a legitimate illness… She was in a HORRIBLE accident (documented) when she was 21 that put her in to a coma for 3 or 4 months and she broke many many bones and sustained internal injury… The long term effects left her with serious and, at the beginning, legitimate pain management issues…
After she started to be mobile again, she met my father and started to build a life… Unfortunately, they liked to party because my father was like 5 years younger than she was so he was in his “19 and stupid” phase while she wanted to start a family… She smoked a LOT of weed… She did a lot of acid… She did Ecstasy… (Which sure as hell didn’t help her innate, biologically inherited mental illness…)
She got hooked on her pain pills… Opiate addiction leads to the brain MAKING MORE PAIN to encourage the body to take more pills…
She physically, verbally, and mentally abused me and caused me to develop Borderline Personality Disorder, PDSD, Depression, and Anxiety…
2. I KNOW that if I let myself, I could easily become an alcoholic… When I do drink, I tend to not be able to drink “A Few” then go home… When I start to drink, I want to drink to excess… So even though I don’t “Crave” booze, I know that if I were to allow myself to start to drink more than “Special Occasions”, I could develop a momentum… I also know that I enjoy opiate pain medications…
I have a hip condition that I inherited from my father’s side of the family so I have a genetic pain management issue that has jacked up my life since the age of 10 when I had my first surgery…
I was stuffed full of opiates to keep me quiet and I learned to like them.
I was young enough, yet had to grow up so fast, that I learned early on that Addiction is a HORRIBLE THING…
That knowledge alone has kept me sober my whole life so far.
I just know that if I EVER let myself run wild, I would start doing opiates, drinking, hell… I’d do shrooms and meth and anything I can get my hands on… But I just don’t allow myself to do those things because of the memory of what a sack of human filth my own mother was…
I don’t want to get knocked up, hooked on drugs/alcohol, and BECOME HER!
Well, let me amend that statement… I did potentially addictive drugs in high school and college but I appear to have inherited more of the “Self Control” genes from my father than the addictive biology from my mother…
I did acid, smoked copious amounts of weed, drank at parties, did A LOT of Cough Syrup…
But I was biologically and mentally able to say “No… I’m done… I have more important things to focus on! That test won’t get taken without me! or I have to go to work!”
BUT… I know I LIKED drugs/alcohol…
I know that though I seem to be able to walk away from a bong or bottle without the Psychological Dependancy that my mother had, I know that if I ALLOWED myself to run wild, I would just WANT to do drugs to the point where I wouldn’t want to stop…
But I know that if I ever went nuts and did drugs, if I was stopped by, say, the cops, I would detox and be able to walk away without the psychological addictions and cravings that my mother had.
I will admit that I am addicted to food… I’m fat and disabled so I can’t exercise without a LOT of pain and I eat when I get depressed…
but other than that, I’m not even a smoker anymore… And I stopped smoking weed when I was 26 and it activated the neurological pathways for my anxiety disorder to blossom…
It is complicated and hard to describe to others since there is no distinction in the “Average” person between Addiction and Dependance.
I may become dependent upon a drug but after I detox, I am not Addicted and CRAVING it like the addict that has been 10 times in to rehab and just can’t quit.
I don’t take advantage or push this distinction because I never know if I may push my luck and activate my biological addiction pathways in the brain and spin out of control.
3. Yes, I think about it all the time… Every few months I like to take a friday night and just get trashed… If I don’t get intoxicated to de-stress, my whole body gets thrown out of wack and I stop healing and my pain threshold drops…
I don’t do it often and I CONTROL MYSELF to once a month or LESS with iron fisted control due to my worry about dependancy and/or addiction.
If you really want to know more about mental illness and addiction, read “Cracked” By Doctor Drew Pinsky.
Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic
http://www.amazon.com/Cracked-Life-Edge-Rehab-Clinic/dp/0060096551/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1270610135&sr=8-1
You can find it in used bookstores or at major retailers like Barns & Noble. (use the address www.bn.com/entertainment for 10% (or more) off any order thanks to the Entertainment Book special web address…)
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