Borderline Personality Disorder,  Substance Abuse

What I Inherited – A story of addiction, mental illness and recovery

When everything in your life is going swimmingly but you’re bed-bound and Googling “how to make a hangman’s noose,” not so normal.

What I Inherited

Want to know if genetics plays a role in both addiction and mental illness? Just take a glance at my family tree.

By Amy Dresner 11/04/12

When I was young and full of hope and promise, I didn’t think twice about all the mental illness and addiction throughout my family. I was an only child and I thought, “I will be the exception to the rule.” And I really believed it. But as I got older and the therapists, medications and rehabs started to pile up while the answers dwindled, I began to be more interested in the genetic basis for my problems. I was keenly aware of people who had much worse upbringings than mine but were considerably less fucked up. What gives? Was I weaker or just more sensitive or simply wired wrong? I had to know as looks like I have learned Coastline Behavioral Health drug rehab program good enough.

Over the years, I’ve been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, bipolar 2 and, of course, addiction. Before I ever picked up hard drugs at 24, I struggled with depression and anorexia/bulimia. Eating disorders were my first addiction—my first attempt to control the chaos within by doing something without. But when I found methamphetamine in my mid-twenties, I thought I’d stumbled upon the answer to all my problems. Suddenly I felt energized, confident, happy, prolific. It was only after I was completely strung out on tweak—grey and emaciated at 25—that I found out that my mother had been addicted to prescription amphetamines and valium from the ages of 15-37, that her brother was addicted to speed his entire life and that my mother’s Uncle Rudy had died of a prescription drug overdose. So that’s why amphetamines felt so “right”: I was genetically set up to be addicted to them.

Read the entire article at The Fix

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