X_benzo_girl, do you suffer from treatment resistant major depression and anxiety or any other mental illness? You went through a long hard road to get back to feeling more normal. Even if I remained sober, I wouldn't feel "normal", I would still be a depressed, anxious, bipolar mess. So I think it's easier for those who were "normal" in the first place to just go back to feeling like their old selves again (after healing of course) if major depression, anxiety or even bipolar was never in the picture.
Yes - I have mental health issues. I'm severely OCD, like the OCD you see in movies, I also have PTSD which I don't often discuss, and for years I had major depression. I thought for the longest time it was treatment resistant but learned a lot of it was drug induced. Drugs brought to a low I barely survived. I stayed at that low for years. When I say feel almost normal, l mean better than my original predrug baseline. As I have used CBT to learn how to better control the OCD and help with the PTSD, I am no longer obviously suffering a mental health issue of I go out in public. I am a functional person again, and continue to improve. I can feel pleasure again, and my bouts of depression are getting fewer and are shorter in duration. Will I ever be normal, I don't know. I hope through continue work I can.
By the way, you should know that OCD is an anxiety based mental disorder. From your post, I gather that you weren't aware of that.
Many times drugs make existing mental health disorders worse, and can seamingly create mental health issues - ie drug induced schizophrenia from psychosis. I think if a drug user is beginning to feel consistently terrible, they should valid consider sobriety to see where their baseline is. Sobriety is not going to hurt them.
I guess I should state for people with major mental health issues, I never intended to infer that they should stop taking their medication, only that they should consider abstaining from extracurricular drugs. I fully realize that a bipolar disorder is not going to nicely go away or control itself. Therapy may make the experience better for the person that suffers, but the condition persists. My heart goes out to people who have bipolar disorders because I see the medication regimes that get scripted, and as with so many other mental health issues, it's a psychiatrist throwing darts hoping something will stick. The medication is brutal. But even in the instance of bipolar, getting to a baseline would make the condition less unpredictable and they can get closer to their baseline.
Some normals are better than others. I would rather have my sober normal now than the normal I had for years using drugs. After that nightmare, my normal is much more pleasant. We don't quickly realize how drugs affect us, and because of the high, it takes time to acknowledge that they are adversely affecting us.
ETA: often I deny the PTSD because it's self induced, and I feel guilty talking about to people who it from life events.
