Why do People Self-Medicate?

I have a brother who took LCD in high school. I am sure part of it was just to be doing what others were doing, but probably part of it was to self-medicate also. In high school, it seems like everything is the end of the world, so it makes sense why so many teens turn to drugs and alcohol to feel okay on the inside for a while.

With most people in high school, you experiment a little, or even maybe a lot, and you look back at those times as "fun", “good” times because you got to forget about reality for a few hours, with not much consequences. At least not many short-term consequences.

Unfortunately for my brother, the first time he tripped off of LCD, was when he totally lost touch with reality, the last time he was fully himself. What started out as just a way to cope with the problems of teen years and to fit in, made him not be able to cope with anything anymore. Because of self-medicating, my brother may not ever be the same mostly happy person that he was.

My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and severe depression a while after this happened. Now those are severe and tragic consequences, but people have had worse consequences, like even death.

If you need help, please ask for help. If no one will help you, please seek the help of professionals, someone should be helpful and caring enough to help you.

Whatever you do, please do not turn to drugs or alcohol to try to “fix” your problem, it could permanently change you for the worse. Please also don’t take drugs and alcohol to fit in, one day you will realize how unbelievably cool it truly was/is to be yourself and to not use drugs and alcohol at all.

I am lucky that I have a family who care/cared about me enough to help me get help when I needed it. I couldn't eat, sleep, do anything without having anxiety and worrying all the time.

With my families help, I was able to stay with them while I went to therapy and they figured out what was wrong with me. I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, and after trying pills that didn't really help much, I was finally prescribed a pill that did.

Now this prescribed pill, Prozac, seems to do everything alcohol would do for me, without the negative side effects. Also, my prescribed pills, along with therapy every week, seem to really be balancing my brain chemistry, and making a real positive impact on my health.

Speaking from experience, you can get help for nearly free or even free, in some instances, you should try this if you can not afford to pay for a therapist on your own. The rewards of getting real, lasting help far outweigh any downfalls you may be thinking of. There is a permanent reward in getting professional help, while only a temporary help in self-medicating.

People self-medicate for many reasons. One reason that I know, from personal experience, is to temporarily be able to deal with the world and somewhat silence your problems for even a few minutes sometimes seems worth the bad/worse feeling you feel after one drinks and/or uses drugs not prescribed to them.

Luckily, I have a pretty non-addictive personality, so I can drink one day and then go months without drinking again. I know it really isn't good to drink much at all, but when you have issues that bother you every moment of every day, most will do anything to escape the mayhem if only for a few minutes or few hours.

Our society is all about the "quick fix", not the best/real fix, so turning to drugs and alcohol and other things to self-medicate really makes a lot of sense in this culture.

If you have not ever had any severe problems, it can be easy to judge others, but once you go through a tough time all the people you may have judged for how they dealt with their problems don’t seem as “crazy” or “reckless” anymore. What once seemed irrational, suddenly seems rational.

I think that so many people self-medicate with alcohol just to be able to deal with their mundane lives. People go to the same job every day for years, come home every night, and have to go to sleep early to get up the next morning and do it all over again.

Once you realize that this is the path your life is taking, you can easily become depressed over it. Just about all of my friends who work 8 to 5 at jobs they merely tolerate come home and have a few drinks every night.

When you get in the swing of things, it can be hard to relax. Alcohol helps you unwind after a stressful day, and it can even help you sleep.

Alcohol is one of the few legal substances you can use to self-medicate. It can easily result in alcoholism, but if you keep your drinking down to one or two glasses of red wine a day, it can actually benefit your heart and mind. I like to feel relaxed but not drunk, so it's easy for me to stop after one full glass.

I have a friend who tried LSD to escape from reality. He absolutely hated his life, and he had become suicidal. The drug let him see everything in a whole new light.

He described the way it had transformed reality for him. He said that everything lost its shape and seemed stretched or scrunched up. Beautiful things looked so much more lovely, and ugly things were unbearably hideous.

He had a few good trips to this alternate reality, but once he had a bad one, he landed in the mental institution. He told me that he still has nightmares about seeing his face melt off and attending his own funeral.

Through therapy, he learned how to cope with his disdain for all things realistic. Today, he says he would rather die than be forced to take another hallucinogenic drug. He has learned to appreciate the normalcy of real life.

@orangey03 – I agree with you. Pills are not the answer. Having said that, I will admit that I used them to deal with extreme sadness. I no longer do that, because I fear that I could become dependent on them.

When my fiancee broke my heart, the pain went so deep that I could physically feel it in my chest. Nothing could make it go away, and I had to feel better. I got a pain pill from a friend, and suddenly, I was all right.

It made me very talkative. I called up everyone I knew and just chatted about everything and nothing. The medication seemed to put my pain to sleep, and I just felt so good inside.

When it wore off, I felt even worse than I had the day before. I wanted another pill so badly, but I fought against it. I knew that in my vulnerable state of mind, I could have become addicted so easily.

I have dealt with lots of heartbreak and depression in my life, and I fully understand why people self-medicate with painkillers. As soon as they kick in, they make you feel like everything is all right, even if your world is upside-down.

When my close friend died, I couldn't deal with the pain. I took a pill, and even in the midst of my grief, I suddenly felt like it was okay. The pill smoothed over my violent waves of sorrow and calmed the stormy sea of my emotions.

Unlike most people, I didn't become addicted to painkillers. I had a few in a bottle that I had gotten for a legitimate condition, and I only used them when I absolutely could not deal with something. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone, because I know the dangers involved when using them for emotional pain rather than physical.

It is so easy these days to do a self medical diagnosis. The internet is full of symptom lists and warning signs and diet warnings and all sorts of things, and it's no wonder many of us feel like we can figure out what is wrong with us without even asking anyone. It's a dangerous thing, but it's unfortunately also very easy.

@Monika- I agree with you about therapy. I have known a few people who self medicated, and while it often was an issue of cost, either way it didn't work because they didn't deal with deeper issues. The fact is any sort of illness, mental or physical, needs a combination of approaches to really be overcome.

@Azuza - That's a good point. I'm sure a lot of people who self-medicate don't do it just because they don't feel like going to the doctor. Many of them can't afford it, like you said!

And of course self-medicating doesn't really work well in the long run. Most people I know who are on actual medication also go to therapy. I think therapy is a big part in handling things like depression and anxiety, and if you're just on medication, you're only treating it halfway. And this problem is definitely exaggerated if you're self-medicating!

I think a lot of people self-medicate because they don't have proper access to healthcare. A lot of people in this country don't have insurance, especially service workers.

This is a huge problem I witness when I worked in bars in college. Bars and restaurants don't offer their employees insurance, so most of the people who work there aren't insured. I was in school at the time, so I was lucky enough to get some affordable insurance through my college.

Other people I knew that weren't students weren't so lucky. I had a friend who really struggled with serious anxiety, and she couldn't afford health insurance. She looked into just paying out of pocket to see a psychiatrist, but even the cost for an office visit was prohibitive. So she drank alcohol to deal with her problem instead.

There are many reasons why people self-medicate, and until you walk in their shoes or really understand their situation, it can be easy to be judgmental.

I am not saying this makes it right, but there are usually tragic or traumatic situations that lead someone to self-medicate.

My brother-in-law was self-medicating with alcohol for many years and he was never able to quit using alcohol. He was also never open to talking about the reasons behind this self destructive behavior.

It was so sad to see him live his life this way, but because he never got any help, he continued in this downward spiral for the rest of his life.

@BrickBack - People do the same thing with alcohol and drugs. It offers a temporary escape of their problems but what they don’t realize is that their life will spiral out of control if they are not careful.

Alcohol is also a depressant and severe drinking can lead to liver damage as well as alcoholism. I think that it is really hard to function in life if you are an alcoholic because of all of the destruction that this condition causes the person that is afflicted and those around them.

I think that many teenagers that are depressed often turn to drugs or alcohol because they were able to escape the problems for that moment. It is really sad that some people feel this is their only way to cope with a problem.

@Sneakers41- You know that a lot of people are self medicating with food. I know that sometimes if I am feeling a little sad or depressed, I will eat some ice cream or crave something sweet. The thing is when anybody self medicates this way too often they tend to develop even more problems than they originally had.

People that are emotional eaters tend to be overweight and if they don’t control the urges and talk about their feelings and substitute the eating with something else they may also develop other health problems like diabetes, heart disease or cancer.

Overeating is really a form of self medicating depression but the feeling that the food gives you is very temporary and then you become worse off than before. Treating a problem like this requires talking to someone because once you find what is really bothering you and deal with that effectively you will also be able to lose weight and live a healthier and happier life.

I think that this is why people that have a lot of weight to lose fail so often because if the situation were as simple as eating the right foods and exercising, no one would have a weight problem. I think that being overweight or even obese is often more complicated than that.

@Sunshine31 - Wow that must be awful. I think that anytime you play around with medication especially prescription medication you are bound to cause irreparable damage to your organs and your overall biochemistry.

People need to take the time to see a doctor especially if they are depressed. Depression can be caused by so many things and a doctor and a therapist might be the best people to help in that situation.

Medication alone can’t help depression because a depressed person also needs cognitive or group therapy to get better. If a pill could solve everyone’s problem than no one would ever be depressed.

I think that this common misconception about depression. Each person that is depressed may need different things which are why they need to see the right professionals that can offer a comprehensive approach to their problems.

Maybe talking to someone might be more effective than a ton of medication. Depression is not something that you can treat by yourself.

I think that sometimes people offer a medical self diagnosis because they are afraid of going to the doctor and really don’t want to face their real problems.

This can be really dangerous because a person could have a serious problem that could be fixed with a doctor’s help but their refusal to see a doctor can create more problems.

I was watching a television program the other day that dealt with people that had severe insomnia. Several of the participants on the show were medicating themselves with dangerous dosages of sleep medication.

One lady was taking twelve over the counter sleep medications to go to sleep. She later went on to chewing the pills so it would enter her system even faster. Another lady was taking a combination of prescription medication that was often four to five times the normal dosages.

She was also taking very high dosages of melatonin which they said on the show was very dangerous. As a result, the lady still had problems going to sleep and because of the high dosages of melatonin, she started to have severe nightmares which would further disrupt her sleep according to the doctor.