When it comes to Mental Health and Addiction

When it comes to mental health and addiction issues, it is super important which the. Or it's super important, the order in which you go about doing things as far as, like, treatment. What do you address first, second, third. That's what we're going to cover in today's video. And if you are you, are you, or you have a loved one who has both a mental health issue and an addiction issue, which is super common, by the way, then make sure you watch this whole video, because getting the oral wrong is gonna mean almost certain failure or unsuccessful or not good outcome, I guess, is the good way to put it. So I have a lot of videos on this channel talking about, you know, the addiction and mental health dilemma. There's a video on the channel called how addicts and alcoholics Sometimes Hide behind Mental Health Problems. And that happens not because they don't have mental health problems, because most certainly they probably do, because chances are. Chances are that they do, because mental health and addiction kind of go hand in hand. It can be like two sides of a coin. A lot of times someone has a mental health problem before they have an addiction, and if they didn't have one before, after developing an addiction, they may very well have worked into having a mental health problem. So sometimes it's hard to figure out chicken or the egg. But regardless, there is a systematic way to go about dealing with things, and that's what we're going to cover in today's video. But before we go a lot further in that topic, I want to say thank you so much to our loyal regular viewers and our subscribers. You guys are the best. In fact, you guys are the inspiration for today's topic. Because without you, sometimes I have a hard time thinking of, well, what do I talk about this week? Or what do people need to hear about? Because when you're in the middle of it every day, it just seems so normal or regular tea, you just don't. It just doesn't come to the front of your brain the same way as it might. But then I get questions or comments or feedback and I'm like, oh, this is something that needs to be talked about or addressed because it's a. It's an issue that people have questions about or they don't know what to do with. And this is definitely one of those. So want to say thank you for that recommendation and hopefully you'll be able to make some sense of this by the end of this video. So. So I commonly say when you have addiction and mental health, you have to treat addiction first. But I am going to give you one caveat to that. So just hang with me. So I guess what I would say is normally you want to treat the addiction first or at least simultaneously. A big mistake that a lot of people make is to think, okay, this person is using because they are depressed or because they are anxious or because of grief, and if we address those issues, then they'll stop using or drinking. Well, it doesn't really work that way. That may very well be the basis of the addiction. But once you've developed an addiction, it becomes its own. It has its own life, it's its own issue. And that issue usually blocks or supersedes even the underlying issue. So you can't get to this one until you deal with this one. If someone's depressed or grieving or anxious or has ADHD or whatever, you can't even think about getting to it when they're using drugs and alcohol constantly, all the time, every day. Because no matter what you do, no matter what talk therapy you have, no matter what good psychiatrist you have, if they're pouring chemicals on top of their brain non stop, nothing is ever going to level out. So I know it's easy to sort of theoretically think, well, if I address this, their need to use or drink will go away. But doesn't really work that way. So in almost every case it needs to be addiction first, followed very closely by mental health. Sometimes you can do that simultaneously, especially if someone's like in an inpatient or residential treatment center. But for sure, if it's like on an outpatient basis or something like that, you definitely need to get that addiction stabilized first. And then don't wait too long, of course, before you start dealing with whatever those other mental health issues are, whether they're like mental health diagnoses or it doesn't even have to be like mental health diagnoses, but other like major stressors like grief or a breakup or the loss of a job or, you know, some kind of other major life stressor, those absolutely have to be dealt with. And if you don't help people either get those conditions stabilized or work through the issue or whatever it is, then those issues continue to be a major trigger for relapse. So. So I know it's complicated because everything's sort of tied together in here, but you've got to figure out what domino to hit first. And in most every case, it's the addiction. But now I'm going to tell you about the one caveat. And I was talking to someone earlier today and that's what made me think about this because I'm like, oh, I say this all the time, but I don't say this. One little caveat. So here we go. The one caveat to that is if your loved one has a mental health crisis happening, and by crisis I mean if they're actively psychotic or delusional or they have schizophrenia or they're in a major manic episode or in a major, major, like depressive episode of bipolar and that is causing a major crisis, then you can't get to the addiction till you get to that. So it's almost like layers, you know, what's the top layer, the second layer, the third layer. So usually that means if someone's psychotic, they're very. They're seeing things, hearing things, they're believed, delusional things, and they have an addiction, then definitely you want to deal with that, that active psychosis or mania. Sometimes it can be, or someone's having an active episode of schizophrenia or something like that, then you want to deal with that first, then the addiction and then maybe like those other mental things. Like make sure you are doing that in that order, because like I said before, if you try to treat the other mental health before the addiction, it's just not going to work. It just. You're never going to get to the mental health. And even if you did, that would not make the addiction stop in and of itself. But those, there are those really acute level, like usually psychosis kind of things going on that you have to get to before even the addiction. Now psychosis and addiction kind of go hand in hand too. And there are lots of reasons for that. Psychosis can happen under just sort of a few conditions. And I'll tell you the most common reasons for psychosis. One reason for psychosis is you can have what's called drug induced psychosis, meaning that you used a lot of a certain drug, usually like a stimulant, usually like an amphetamine, a methamphetamine or cocaine, to the point that it made you see things, hear things, believe things that are not true. So you frequently see this with people who are having a problem with methamphetamines or meth or whatever. We also very commonly see people have psychotic episodes which seem to be preceded by a lot of smoking of marijuana, particularly young guys. I've seen it tons of times. It's very sad. It's usually like late teens or early college years or early twenties, something like that. If you know they're smoking a lot of marijuana, then there's A, there's some sort of link between that and then this, these sort of psychotic episodes. And there's some back and forth about why that is. The research definitely shows that there's some kind of link, but it's. It's not exactly clear. But I can tell you I've seen it enough times to know that there's something going on there for sure. There is a thought that there could likely be an underlying mental health problem that could have been there and then gets activated by the marijuana use. Meaning, like sometimes if you think of it like some people think of it like you might have a cancer gene, but it might not activate unless you smoke a lot of cigarettes or something like that. That's one level of thought. But another thinking on this issue is the fact that marijuana is different now than it used to be. It's always been categorized as a psychoactive or a psychedelic drug. As far as like, is it a stimulant, depressant, that kind of thing, it's always been categorized that way. But normally when we think about marijuana we think, you know, most adults, they think of it like maybe marijuana from the 70s or something like that. And used to the level of the active ingredient THC in marijuana was so much lower than it is now. And even when people smoked it, even regularly, they usually smoked it socially. So they sort of shared it in circle, like classic style, like on that 70s show. These days people get marijuana in these super, like the super strength marijuana and they get it in cartridges and they smoke it in vape pens and it is a whole different thing. And they're smoking it all day, every day by themselves, like other people vape nicotine, they're vaping marijuana. So we're just not dealing with the same thing that we used to. And there is a lot of research now that shows that regardless of underlying mental health condition, you can. Marijuana can cause a psychotic episode. The chances of having a psychotic episode when you are using a lot of marijuana regularly are way higher whether or not you have an underlying mental health episode. Now I know that's kind of scary. So that's what's called substance induced psychosis. Another way or reason that people can have psychosis is if they stop using certain substances cold turkey. And that certain substance would be alcohol and, or a benzodiazepine. The withdrawal from those substances can trigger some psychosis, delusion and that kind of thing, which can be pretty scary. Usually once the withdrawal is over, that's usually fairly easily treated as long as someone gets help. The substance induced Meaning the psychosis started because of the drug. It's a little harder to get under control. And then the other reasons why people have psychotic symptoms are because of usually bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, or there's something called schizoaffective, which is kind of like a combination between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. And those are major mental health episodes. And it doesn't mean they have those delusions all the time, but those are symptoms of those particular mental health disorders. When that's happening, you're not dealing with someone that is in their right thinking. They're not in their reasonable, rational brain. And that's why it's. That's why it's just so hard to get anywhere else. You've got to get that under control first. So I hope that helps you guys figure out, you know, what to do first, second, and third. It is extremely important in these kind of situations what you do, and in that order. If you want more information on how to help loved ones struggling with an addiction, whether they're in denial and you're trying to get them help or they're in treatment and you want to figure out how to support them after, or they're doing well, but you just want to figure out what's the best way to support a loved one in early recovery, then I hope you'll consider being a part of our family recovery academy. There is a link to more information about that in the description below. And I will see you guys next Thursday at 1.