Drugs and mental illness

People who used drugs have been stigmatised in ways in which other people who are mentally ill are stigmatised. Violence, immorality, disability, cognitive deficits and early death.

Strangely drugs 'cure' and supposedly cause mental illness. The divide is not as simple as the divide between legal and illegal. Ssris cause suicide and ketamine helps depression in bipolar.

Addictions are clearly a mental illness. There is a movement for drug use, rather than abuse, to be considered a mental illness. Mental illness, after all, can and is used for means of social control.

People who experience mental distress self medicate. It works too. More than one study shows binge drinking to be a viable option to an antidepressant addiction. Many can find the happiness in life from drugs they can't get from life. I couldn't even find that happiness in drugs.

But the mentally ill want to impose a hierachy and exsclude drug users from their privileges. They want to consider drug users with the same stigma 'normal' people use on them. They chose to despise and outcast drug addicts from their communities and not bother to seek inclusion. This is true of the mental health movement as well as the mentally ill as individuals.

There might be a thought that drug users can stop. Just like depressives can cheer up or anorexics can eat. There is a thought that drugs are illegal and this means they are wrong. The people who agree with this line of thinking would have agreed with homosexuality's criminalisation.

Of course drug use and abuse is different to the norm except from alcohol in the UK. I'm sure someone from China would baulk at the prevalence of alcohol use in the UK but they're a more accepting culture in certain ways.

Drug users suffer though. They get the worst of the stigma. They get little compassion or understanding. Doctors have terrible and torturous solutions such as forced detoxing.

The worst thing? No one gives a shit. Even psychos get better support. Druggies get a harsh life.

But perhaps that's not the worse thing. The worse thing is the immoral criminalisation of drugs. This kills. This means crime prospers and users are at risk.

Fuck. Guns are legal in the US and available with a license in the UK. Nuff said? Or do I need to elaborate more?

There are the drug users who stay silent. Those who never reveal the truth: they enjoy drugs and function well. Just like coward homosexuals of yesteryear they leave it to brave fools. Those who lose in life but give to humanity's progress are those who are open about their perjoratised lifestyle.

So many 'good' drug users stay silent because they fear discrimination. And so the immorality continues.

I know too many drug users from doctors to lawyers, bankers to engineers. People you might not believe did drugs.

In the last sentence swap drug user for mentally ill and travel back a few decades. Why must people stay silent?

Stigma and discimination.