Addiction How did you realize you had a problem?

[Emptty]

Emptty,

It sounds like you have good instincts about finding help for yourself. That will take you a long way.

And btw, if you're not inclined to describe online the various diagnoses you're up against, that's understandable and of course it's 100% fine. But I hope you'll feel encouraged and free to share as much about your situation here as you're comfortable with. Many of us on SL (most of us, I'd bet) will certainly be able to relate. But this choice is of course entirely yours to make.

It's less a comfort thing and more a matter of having gotten odd responses in the past, one of the conditions is something that isn't really rare but is rarely discussed openly so many people just have no clue what I'm talking about even in spaces where other mental illness is openly discussed.

The main issues with finding treatment in my case are my BPD and my DID.
A lot of professionals still see personality disorders as difficult to treat, in fact until the development of DBT as a treatment method BPD was considered essentially untreatable. I have friends who work in the mental health field and some of the advice they get in school includes "Don't take more than one or two patients with BPD at a time." and at times even "Avoid people with BPD altogether if you can." Therapists have denied to treat me due to my BPD and many treatment programs that aren't 100% mental health focused state they won't work with people who have personality disorders. It's entirely a matter of stigma but unfortunately a very real one.

As for DID it's just incredibly complicated to treat (It's like a buy 1 patient get 10+ free deal). Along with that the education professionals get on it is extremely lacking or at times even entirely inaccurate. A lot of places won't work with patients who have DID simply because they don't know how. Even the professionals I see right now admit they're not sure how to work with it and had to seek second opinions just to diagnose me correctly.

But, as my first post in this thread might have indicated, there wasn't really a "magic moment." Those are just a few of the times I had insight into how damaging or potentially damaging my use was or could become.

Over time, I have become more aware of what I was doing to myself and how it was affecting the course of my life's development. There have been many genuinely insightful moments, each with their own bit of clarity - and they continued after I stopped using regularly and then altogether.

But whether insight translated into action is another matter entirely. Each individual insight was necessary in motivating and instructing me to find ways of modifying my behavior and lifestyle, yet I didn't have the skills necessary to make meaningful changes in my life at that early stage (which was also probably a big part of the reason I found heroin/opioid use so attractive to begin with - it was like the short in terms of dealing with, or not having to deal with, challenges I face with things like anxiety).

I definitely relate to this, while some realizations are stronger than others like realizing exactly how desperate my drive to use had gotten and realizing how obsessed with drugs I had become I still never had any rock bottom "I need to change my life now" type moments. It's just a slow build up, even getting to the point of saying there's an issue has taken years of those moments because I tend to brush them off as insignificant.

It's not as if I never recognized the risks inherent in what I was doing, I've seen people overdose and I've seen my friends go to jail over the exact same shit I was doing. I suppose I just tried to ignore the fact it could happen to me. But even in realizing the risks and the consequences, seeing how it's all affected my relationships and my plans for my future I find it hard to push myself towards any meaningful changes.

 

[simco]

Hey, Emptty. You're absolutely right--people who suffer from personality disorders do get egregiously stigmatized. I'm sorry to hear that's the hand that's been dealt to you.


Sim