Illegal Drug Use/Addiction

I have just discovered that several of my friends from high school or college are bi-polar. The majority of them are using "hard" illegal drugs. This is very scary to me, because one of my friends was murdered in a drug transaction and another is using drugs and paying for them with sex. Both were not on meds and said that the meds didn't work or stifled them. I am confused because I would think that you would want to be stable and safe--not in the streets.

What are your thoughts...?

I am an addict and have used "hard" illegal drugs to make me feel better even when I knew it wasn't healthy for me. There are times when life just seems to get to be too much and the meds aen't working or I'm not allowing them to work and will self medicate with things that i know I shouldn't use. i am also a recovering alcoholic.

Hi there,

I am a person in long term recovery. I have been in recovery from alcohol and other drugs, by the grace of God, for 17 years. When I was using, I am positive that I used to self-medicate because I had not been diagnosed yet. I probably went 20 years with out being properly diagnosed. Mostly, my diagnosis was either Major Depression or Situational Depression. I would be put on antidepressants for as long as I could tolerate them and then come off of them. (of course I wouldn't go to the doctor when I was feeling "too" good.... who ever told the doctor they felt "too" good??)

I used alcohol and other depressants (illegal drugs and misused rx medications) to bring down my highs during my late teens and twenties. I was a very high functioning bipolar addict, still an honor graduate from both college and grad school, and holding down a job. But... I probably have my hypomania to thank for the energy... lol. I got clean/sober at the age of 30. I'm surprised I made it alive.

Why do people choose street drugs over rx medication? Why do they choose the street life over another life? That is such a complicated question. First of all, many people with Bipolar truly feel that the Rx blunt their drive and their creativity. They have a sense that the medication that is supposed to make them healthy "robs" them of WHO they are. With street drugs, a person at least has the choice as to when they can medicate the high, when they can "chill out." They just don't realize that the drug has robbed their choice in another way (through addiction).

It is very common for people with a mental health diagnosis to also have an addiction (60% of us do). Mood disorders and addictions impact the very same area of the brain and impact the very same neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine). So it serves to reason that a majority of us would have that creep into our lives as well.

Once again.... my 2 and a half cents!!

Jules
The data geek

Thank you for your responses. I have more of an insight now. I just get so worried that I am going to fall into that cycle someday. I am about to be 30 and truly by the grace of God, I have developed a severe aversion to alcohol- I vomit with even the least amount. I don't know if it is a conscious or sub-conscious response or an effect from the meds that I am on.

I have never had 1st hand experience with illegal drugs except for marijuana, and I didn't like the feeling that gave me. I felt so out of control.

I do occasionally and have self-medicated with Xanax to calm down or to go to sleep.

Hi Amberlynn. If you are taking the Xanax as prescribed by a doctor you are currently seeing, in the amounts and frequency he/she ordered and for the reasons he/she told you to take it, you are not "self medicating" in the addictive drug sense. Personally, i get very annoyed with mass media when they say you are an "addict" if you are taking medication the way your current treating pdoc tells you to.

On the other hand, if you are using someone else's prescription or pills that are more than a year old that were ordered by a doctor you no longer see---and your current doctor does not know about the pills, then you definitely need to talk to your current doctor. My prescriber always, always asks me how many of my "as needed" pills I have used and I am glad she does. Mental health issues are hard enough to handle without adding drug problems.

I would be very careful in what I said to anyone I knew that was using street drugs. I absolutely would not let them know I had any kind of precription meds on hand. Don't share your drugs with anyone both because its illegal and you have no way to know what else another person is taking and that person could get very ill from weird drug combinations--maybe even die. Addicts are goood at sob stories so be very very skeptical about any requests for your drugs from people--none of the "I forgot mine at home and I'll pay you one back "thing.Please stay safe.

Thank you. My mother and I both have been guilty of sharing Xanax. We both have very severe panic attacks, but have stopped sharing sense my doc prescribed a higher dosage for me--now I don't need her supplement.


Currently, I am just taking the Xanax on an as needed basis...which thankfully is not that often. I record when I do have to take it.

I've spent quite a lot of time in hospital over the years and I would say that probably 60% of my fellow patients had hard drug, soft drug or alcohol problems and a lot of the use was self-medication. Hard to say if the drugs were taken to ease the pain in the first place or whether they were one of the causes of the mental health problems.

I've never experimented with drugs as such but have had pethidine, diamorphine and morphine prescribed in the past for kidney stone pain. Two things of interest there. First, although the pain from a kidney stone is excruciating, when I was down I welcomed it; it overshadowed the depression somehow and then the second benefit ..... the opiates. Boy did they alter my mental state. Within minutes of the injection the depression lifted and I entered a euphoric state. Self-belief and confidence flooded in, ideas sprang into my brain. I was literally fizzing with potential and so glad to be alive. As the drugs wore off my mood plummeted to lower than it was before. Having been given those drugs I can easily understand how you could become dependant. Sometimes I was sent home with pethidine tablets which I would pool and crush in an attempt to replicate the effects of the hospital injections but they were a poor substitute. Probably just as well.

Interestingly, when I was on sodium valproate - which stabilised me in a depressive state - pethidine and morphine did not induce euphoria. I'm a biologist and knew that observations like this are important so I dicussed it with my new psychiatrist. He said it was very useful for him to know because it gave him a comparison of how I reacted to a known trigger (i.e. opiates) and it helped him refine a prescription that has given me my life back.

I completely agree with Lizabeths comment about not letting anyone who is using street drugs know you have a psych prescription and also not to share your medicines as some of the medication types are contraindicated with each other. Sharing was common on some of the wards I have been in. Patients often smuggled meds in and they were used as currency. Thing is you never knew what you were getting if you didn't see them come out of the original pack. I don't know if anyone came to harm but I do know that the patients that did this that tended to be unstable and often stayed in hospital longer than those of us who didn't.

Stay well