Quote:
Originally Posted by crystalan
And there is history of depression and alcoholism in my family. I was an alcoholic and quit cold turkey about 1 1/2 yrs. ago, after I very much embarrassed myself in front of my ex-boyfriend's family. No AA, just did it on my own. And now, because of that, it inhibits my social life, I think you can all relate maybe a bit to that.
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Good for you... as an alcoholic with 27+ years of sobriety, I salute you. I did the same thing. It does get easier, but never easy. If you ever do need help, AA
DOES work. I've been to 1 meeting in my life, and I
KNOW from that one experience that if I needed support, I could find it there.
In the general vain of this thread I have a couple of thoughts. About some people's complaint of over-medicating mental illness... that's pretty much a $$$ issue. Drug companies make money from the sale of drugs, and if no one has the illness they've made the drug for, then they make no money.
The solution for the drug companies is to have more people diagnosed with the illness. Or a creative way of marketing the drug. A real example (not in mental illness, but still indicative) is for the artificial Human Growth Hormone, targeted at children with treatable forms of dwarfism or other genetic abnormalities that restricted their physical growth. It was directed towards the bottom 10% of children in terms of height. Neat, huh? No matter how tall the population gets, the market is still 10% of the population. By extension, target your mood enhancing drug to the unhappiest 10% of the population, and you can NEVER cure unhappiness.
Secondly, I'm not suggesting that there aren't legitimate needs for drugs... there definitely are. I have a wife who suffered from clinical depression and a friend who slowly sank into the miasma of his own schizoid mind. He is now essentially non-functional. There are people who need and prosper on drug therapy, and need the support of family & friends to understand the "invisible" nature of their problem.
We'd open the door for someone in a wheelchair. Why won't we spend 5-10 minutes to support a friend with a personality disorder?