How to Stop Self-Medicating Mental Illness With Drugs
In the United States, 21 million have at least one drug-related addiction with a growing number also having comorbid mental illness. Substance use disorder is a mental disorder that affects an individual’s ability to control their use of substances such as alcohol, marijuana, and many others. Many people with substance use disorder will find themselves in a vicious cycle of craving a drug and feeling depressed or low after its effects wear off. Some of these individuals even feel like they need the drug of choice to feel happy or maintain normal function. Below are a number of ways you can teach yourself how to stop self-medicating your depression, and other mental health issues, with drugs.
Get Professional Help
Data suggests that only 10% of people with substance use disorder addictions will seek help. This means that you are NOT alone in your struggles, and there are experts out there that truly want to see you succeed. You might not seek help because money is an issue, you are scared, you feel hopeless/untreatable, or many other reasons. However, getting professional help and learning effective ways to treat mental health symptoms is an extremely critical step in your healing process.
Professional help means seeing a psychologist that specializes in substance use disorder or a general therapist that can help with your depression. Take the first step to learn healthier ways to cope with your drug use and how to stop self-medicating. You are stronger than you realize!
Understand and Know Your Triggers For Self-Medicating
Most individuals with substance use disorder have one or more triggers that lead them to use the drug of their choice. Learning which environments, mood states, thoughts, and people lead you to use drugs is vital. For example, individuals with anxiety disorders might initially use it when they are anxious, only to lead to depression after the high wears off.
Becoming aware in the short term of your triggers helps avoid situations where you are much more likely to consume a drug. In the long term, this can help you learn the best way to cope with negative emotions that might arise.
Set Realistic Expectations and Goals
It is common for people to set massive, unrealistic goals when initially attempting to quit a drug. Especially with heavy alcohol abuse, it is important to slowly ween yourself off the drug to attempt severe side effects and even death. For drugs with less severe withdrawal effects, it is still important not to expect yourself to succeed cold turkey first try. Substance abuse disorder is defined as a disorder for a reason and should be treated with patience, determination, and perseverance.
Understand your mental health conditions, and set goals accordingly. If you know you get severe anxiety without using illegal drugs, then start by cutting your dose down by 25%. Your ultimate goal is to reach 0% of your normal dose. Slowly decreasing the amount of drugs that you use will teach you how to stop self-medicating with drugs.
Your Mental Health Disorders Are Relevant
Understanding your mental health conditions, whether you have a diagnosed disorder or not, is incredibly important in the long run for appropriately dealing with drug abuse. For example, someone with bipolar disorder is likely to use drugs for different reasons than someone with alcohol use disorder. If you know when and why you are more likely to use a drug, learning how to stop self-medicating will be easier.
Learn About The Illicit Drugs You Use
Although this tip can also apply to more legal and socially-accepted drugs such as marijuana and alcohol, people tend to be much less informed about illegal drugs. Understanding how prescription drugs and other recreational drugs affect your mind, brain, and body might act as additional motivation when attempting to find healthier coping mechanisms.
Certain drugs can be damaging to your brain, body, and/or mind. This knowledge may create uncomfortable feelings when you go to use again, potentially delaying or decreasing your use of the substance. This tip will hopefully push you in the direction of learning how to stop self-medicating.
You Are Not Alone!
When it comes to learning how to stop self-medicating and mental illnesses, it is very common to feel alone in your struggles. However, this could not be further from the truth. I sit here writing this very sentence and article to help people just like yourself live the best life you can. Lean on your family, friends, or anyone else that you are close to for support. Even going to social events can be a healthy way to interact with others and make your brain feel good without drugs.
Understand Why You Self-Medicate (Underlying Issues)
People self-medicate for a variety of reasons, and understanding why you started and why you use now can be beneficial. Many might have started a form of self-medication due to emotional pain, family problems, school/work problems, and a variety of others. Think back to the first time you used your drug of choice. Was there something you were trying to avoid or suppress when using, or do you have a hard time remembering?
If you are not sure why your self-medicating behaviors began, talking to a mental health professional will definitely help you better understand your situation. You can also talk to close family members or friends if that is an alternative for you. Ultimately, knowing why you started using and why you currently use might allow you to perceive your addiction differently.
Drug Use Only Provides Temporary Relief
Learning how to stop self-medicating can begin by understanding the pros and cons of drug use. An almost universal downside of consistently using drugs is the temporary nature of the high you might experience. You also build up a tolerance to many drugs that are especially addictive, meaning you need a higher dose the more you take. Higher tolerances can also increase the chances of adverse experiences and even overdoses.
Understand that permanent happiness will never come from the external world; only you can make yourself from the inside out. This means anything from drugs, material items such as clothes, money, and even sex or porn are only temporary reliefs from whatever you are experiencing. Use this as motivation to slowly but repeatedly decrease the amount of drug you are consuming until you need none!
Avoid or Manage Stressful Situations
Many might find that a heavy trigger for drug use is stressful situations such as a long day of work or lots of homework. If you cannot avoid stressors (such as work or school), then learn how to more efficiently manage the stress. Oftentimes, stress is only as bad as we make it within our own heads. You are capable of overcoming your worst stressors and uncomfortable emotions, and how you perceive and manage them is critical.
The Dangers of Self-Medicating
Although scaring our users into sobriety is not at all our goal, we believe it is a good idea for us to understand just some of the potential consequences of prolonged drug use. Some obvious dangers include overdose, temporary or permanent damage to the brain and/or body, development or worsening of mental illness, and many more. These are some of the worse side effects of drug use, but the specific side effects depend on many factors. Factors that may influence negative effects include your drug of choice, your own physiology and mental health history, the amount of the drug you use, and much more.
As you can see, there are many factors that might determine how dangerous drug use can be. However, learning how to stop self-medicating mental illness with drugs is the number one way to avoid all of these dangers.
Make a List of Negative Consequences
When we go to use drugs, we often think of all the good feelings and experiences we might have from the drug. However, making a list of negative effects and checking it prior to drug use can decelerate your desire to use drugs. This is especially true when the negative consequences of drug use are significant and extremely undesirable. Placing this list on a sticky note or somewhere that is easily viewable prior to drug consumption is ideal.
Conclusion
Substance use disorder and drug use in general can be extremely challenging to go through. However, you must always remember that you are not alone and there are absolutely steps you can take to learn how to stop self-medicating. Do not set unrealistic expectations but instead smaller, more achievable goals. Rely on the tips above and those that you love to guide you through this challenging time!
Addiction Sources
https://projectknow.com/alcohol/statistics/
https://www.addictioncenter.com/addiction/addiction-statistics/