What’s wrong with you?
Why do you keep doing crazy, reckless things?
Don’t you see that you’re being awful to others?
Borderline Personality (BPD) might be reasonably considered one of the most misunderstood mental illnesses.
As we discussed in the last blog post about BPD, alcohol can trigger downward mood swings, and cause a self-perpetuating cycle of reckless behavior, severe moodiness, and depression to persist.
If you’ve been diagnosed with BPD, to an outside observer, your behavior might appear to be dysfunctional, dependent, dramatic, and manipulative, at surface level. You might not even realize you were displaying these behaviors, but rather, you were focused on your own despondence. BPD might cause you to appear to make rash, shrewd decisions, with little regard for consequences or peers.
However, it is crucial to understand that this behavior is not intentionally manipulative, and the BPD individual is rarely cognizant of the real consequences of their behavior. Rather, it’s a coping mechanism, that helps someone with the diagnosis to deal with excessive fear, sadness, and a severe lack of self-worth.
Why do people with mental illnesses turn to drugs as a form of relief? Different drugs might be appealing to someone diagnosed with borderline personality, for different reasons.
Since they always feel as though they are the victim, that everyone is out to get them, they want to quash that anxiety. So they turn to abusing a benzodiazepine, like Xanax, without being diagnosed. Or perhaps they want to simply chill out: they can’t, there’s too many issues going on in their life. So they decide to try an opioid, just to take a load off and finally, truly relax. Or perhaps they are feeling reckless, so they decide to try out a stimulant, like methamphetamine. Since they already wrestle with issues related to reckless behavior, the high energy, flightiness, and even rage that might accompany an upward mood swing could prove to be very dangerous.
That’s why it’s crucial to understand that treating a mental illness like BPD, alongside an associated substance use disorder or misuse disorder, is the only way sustained recovery can be achieved. When medication, therapy, and other techniques to treat mental illness are utilized in conjunction with addiction recovery, the results are far more concrete, and the individual is far more prepared to tackle the process of rehabilitation with nothing holding them back.
