Yeah…You bring up a very real and honest topic. People use their mental issues as a scapegoat for anything negative they do…It’s a dangerous form of emotional blackmail. Thanks for talking about it so openly…
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There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.
This shit’s been around for a while.
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Lol I think we all know I don’t have any original thoughts
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This 
. I still have to be aware of my anxiety, but alcohol was the biggest factor to fuel it. They are weening me off my lexapro.
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Great!
I’m in therapy and have to manage anxiety daily and catch myself before falling too deep into down moods that cycle but it is manageable. It wasn’t before.
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This 100000%
I blamed everything on my diagnosis
Refused medication cause I believed it changed my personality and who I am,
Got drunk, I was depressed or manic or struggling with PTSD, got high well I was manic hooked up with your best friend well I was manic and high and drunk and well I had no impulse control.
I rode that into the ground, and then some. I’m medicated now, and sober, which is most important I’m sure the meds won’t do fuck all if I’m washing down a high with a bottle. And Yano I still have my up and down days not nearly as bad, I still get depression mostly every now and again, I just run through the course of the day instead of calling out sleeping till noon and getting wasted by 1,
It kinda goes hand in hand with step 1 admitting you have a problem, well I have multiple problems how am I gonna solve them? Only then could I pass go and collect 200 dollars
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So many addicts do that, while merrily self medicating away on substances that cause the opposite of what they are trying to achieve, better mental health that is. I refused anti-depressants for quite long too, while smoking and drinking away. “No mind altering chemicals in my system!” How blind could I be.
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Adding one more thought…It is EASY to self-medicate with substances and it is a hard cycle to break out of. You have to really want to do it and be desperate enough because change is hard. I have a lot of empathy for folks who come here and tell their daily story of struggle in that rut because they may not fully understand what they are stuck in. Some is willful, sometimes it’s self delusional, sometimes our sickness makes us believe substances are the only way to make it to tomorrow. I know I believed that at times. But ultimately everything folks have said here starting with Derek is the bottom line that people have to come to accept.
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Alcohol changed my personality. Without it, I am who I am.
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I wore the badge of functional alcoholic like it was an honor,
Took me a long time to realize I wasn’t functioning I was surviving, the term functioning alcoholic is a misnomer, just cause I can go to work, keep a house semi together, and have a path of destruction behind me, isn’t functioning it’s barely an existence at best
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Just about surviving but actually feel like I am in hell alcoholic would be better, right?
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very cool @SinceIAwoke
I think I will be stopping in here to read some Truth and Tough Love shares. I Love some Spiritual experience and awakening stories. 
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Yep, my best thinking got me in to trouble, in fights, in jail, and then sent to the rooms of AA, the last house on the block.
I had to surrender my way.
Now I live a Life far beyond anything I could come up within my nogin
Thanks for the good read @Englishd and happy to meet you. 
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My sobriety is not based on my ability to form a plan. Forming a plan is easy. Anyone can form a plan. I’d be high outta mind and forming plans all the time. Or I’d be laying in bed swearing off booze for the millionth time. I’d have all sorts of plans.
What I’ve found is that my willingness to execute the plan is what got me sober. I needed to stop talking about all the things I was going to do and actually get off my ass and do them. A plan is only as good as my willingness to actually follow it.
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Three frogs sat on a log. One decided to leap off. Then how many frogs were there on the log?
Three.
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“I relapsed because xyz”
“Xyz made me drink”
No. You drank because you chose to. The end.
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In order to accomplish anything one must have two things; the will to do so, and the means to do so. Of these two, the will is the more important. Absent the will, all the means in the world are useless.
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My name is Xyz (pronounced Zizz) and I find this highly offensive!
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Then stop making people drink, ya jerk.
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I like where you’re coming from.
Every time somebody has asked me “damn how do you do that?” I just say practice.
There is no replacement, there is no shortcut, there are no “get good quick!” secrets.
There is no such thing as “talent”, only hard earned skill. So stopping wishing you were better and go get better!
Speaking of, time to practice my drum rudiments
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