This is a comment that I left on the Naming and Treating blog.
I have both a mood disorder (bipolar disorder type II) and two personality disorders (borderline personality disorder and OCD) and at this point in my life I can't tolerate alcohol even though I drank a lot when I was younger. I could always stop. This isn't to say the potential wasn't there as there are alcoholics on both sides of my family.
I imagine that similar areas of the brain may be "off" in both addictive personalities and mental illness but I don't know enough about it to say which areas these are. I do know that blaming and shaming never cured anybody of anything, so there needs to be a different approach.
2 comments:
A lot of people self-medicate and eventually end up addicted to whatever they use. So I'm definitely not blaming Amy for that. (Now that would be hypocritical, wouldn't it.)
At some point I did think, hey girl, you could have at least tried... but it seems that she was surrounded by too many people who either didn't care to see her get better or had vested interest in seeing her sick.
I know she had some history of self-injury, so there's a potential borderline personality there. There was more going on with her than people realize.
My grandmother was an alcoholic after she was forced to retire from her job. If she hadn't drank that way she wouldn't have damaged her liver and kidneys and probably would have lived even another 10-20 years. Instead she died at 75 and in horrible health. It was easy to be angry with her and think it was a "choice," but it really wasn't.
Even with someone like me who doesn't even smoke at this point, people see the fact that I'm heavy as a "choice" although it's multifactoral. "Just eat less and exercise more," blah blah blah." And even my depression levels are seen as a choice by some people. There was even a certain know it all fellow bipolar who said "if you would just get on the correct medication." Of course some people can't take most medications--the side effects are too horrendous. And the first side effect on most of them is WEIGHT GAIN! Yeah--that's just what I need.
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