Relationship between Illegal Drugs and Mental illness [Part 1]

By Steve [from Working the Doors]

There are many instances of people using illegal drugs as a form of self-medication. Many a lifelong struggle with addiction begins with a simple, earnest attempt to alleviate the symptoms of a particular mental illness.

Mental illnesses are numerous and highly varied. Often, they are completely misunderstood, even by doctors.
Eventually, illegal drug use and mental illness begin to exacerbate one another.

This can make it borderline. Make it impossible to extricate the symptoms of one disorder from those of the other.

In turn, this can make both conditions much harder to treat.

It is also very common for an otherwise healthy drug user to develop a mental illness as a result of their regular use of dangerous substances. The same vicious cycle mentioned above results.

The drug addiction exacerbates the mental illness. All the while, mental illness feeds into the drug addiction. Resulting in a co-occurring disorder.

Addiction has been shown to cause distinct changes to a person’s brain, disrupting what is termed ‘the hierarchy of needs’.

First mapped out by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943, the hierarchy of needs is a scientific model that attempts to explain human motivations. It is usually depicted as a triangle or pyramid.

When a person is addicted to illegal drugs, they will privilege the drug over their most basic needs.

In effect, getting and using the illegal drugs become prioritized over food, shelter, clothing. Even social acceptance and love lose importance.

The compulsions exhibited by addicts bear striking similarities to several symptoms of mental illnesses.

Next time we continue on what happens when basic priorities go out the window with illegal drugs use

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Bio 
Working the doors is a blog supporting door supervisors and security staff, they are in contact with drugs on a constant basis and see the wrong side of drug use and issues they cause

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