you are probally right, I'm sure my Doctors have some idea

I recently told my counsellor about my prevous addiction to Tylonel 3 and 4. Luckily I was able to control my addiction on my own, I was a rare case I guess.

Pot is bad for you... but it seems to be the only thing that can stabalize me... it helps with the nausua and oddly enough seems to help me concentrate on one thing. THat and smoking are my two addictions (i don't even drink coffee)

Everyone with PTSD has something to help control it, and there are a known quantity of things which do that, for example:

• Pot (acceptable)
• Cigarettes (acceptable)
• Drugs (not acceptable)
• Alcohol (acceptable in small amounts)
• Medications (acceptable in required prescribed limits)
• etc etc

There are things that are just known to those with PTSD that help control the symptoms. From my point of view, if it works, do it, but as long as a user is doing it within acceptable limits.

Pot usage where a person smokes one or two joints a day, I would see as acceptable. If a person where smoking the stuff from when they got out of bed, and then using during the day and night, I would say that is unacceptable. The same would be said for someone who uses nicotine... if the are smoking what is "normal" usage of cigarettes, that would be ok, but if they are chain smoking, then that would not be ok.

I guess how I see it from what I know about it, is that there is a use and abuse. I know people, and did this myself, with the prescribed medications, where I was prescribed "x" amount, and abused it to exceed the prescribed amount because it wasn't working at those levels. The reason I never said anything to my doctor, is that he said first, if I need 40+mg of lexapro daily, then I am bordering being locked up. Whilst I needed it for a short time, I am now medication free... though use cigarettes in an acceptable dosage to help keep me calm. About 10 - 15 per day. Alcohol, barely touch it nowadays. I might binge twice a year, if that, and that is generally only when someone invites me out on the town for a night. Even then, I still don't drink anywhere what I used to when going out for the night.

When PTSD had control over me, it was nothing to spend $300 a night when I went out on alcohol. Now, I might spend $100, and that is only because you pay $5 a beer generally, or $7 a spirit.

You have to really be honest with yourself I think, in that if you "use" something to help keep PTSD under control when your still working through the issues, then that is quite acceptable, but if you abuse, then that is not, and you would need to take action to reduce your dependance upon it.

Today I told a doctor about my pot usage...
and you were right... she wasn't suprised at all,
she just told me that I should be very very careful about my use... she doesn't want me to have to fight an addiction as well, so I think even that Doctor would agree with your above post about acceptable use vs. abuse.

Gotta love it how pot is almost legal here in Canada,
I think people are starting to recognize it's medicinal benifits
... when used in moderation of course
It's just so nice to be able to openly discuss it with health care professionals
without being labeled as a drug addict.

You really wouldn't surprise anyone who deals with PTSD regularly... you will find they have pretty much heard it all. For those that have only dealth with a handful of cases, that could be another thing, but any professional who has dealt with it over years, they generally already know, or can guess the parts you miss out. My doctors where brutally honest, as they have been dealing with this for 30+ and more years some of them.

I have been every level of dependance...sometimes a drink or two out with friends, sometimes going weeks without drinking and then a weekend spent binging on anything with a % sign on it. I spent weeks plastered because the world scared me too much. When I drank I felt better, I was alive, I felt good, I wanted to be near happy people...I wanted to laugh again, even if it was false, I wanted something to break up the monotony of sadness that my life had become. I was surrounded by people, family, friends...but it would not kill that lonely feeling, it could not murder that sense of separateness I felt everytime I looked outside myself. Strangely enough I could not do drugs they made me limp, non existant, a large lump of nothingness stuck in my head. I felt that everyday...why would I take a pill to make me feel it again? I was escaping those things through alcohol...what I did not understand at the time was that the people I was with were doing the same thing. But I still go out to feel alive again...is that strange? Knowing these things full well and still finding comfort in them? They are familuar to me, a blanket.

Hi Liza,

I think its a bit of a fine line myself, in that you get people who are against alcohol altogether, and those that are nothing more than drunks. When you have PTSD, alcohol becomes a method to suppress trauma, which is why it generally is off no real value. Is it wrong to drink? I don't think so... hell, who wants to die from boredom? People have to make their own decisions, and it generally differs across age groups, in that the younger you are, generally the more suceptible to drinking you are, with peer group pressure. As you get older, most tend to settle down a bit more, and drink less. If you drunk before PTSD, then the problem generally gets worse with PTSD.

The problem with drinking in excess with PTSD, is alcohol is a depressant, so if your hit hard by depression and depresive thoughts, suicide, etc etc, then alcohol must be taken out of your social calender. If not, then I see no reason why a person can't have a social drink. Use, Abuse, Dependence! Use is fine, Abuse is binge drinking, which just isn't healthy, and dependence generally equates to use and abuse, and you can't make it through the day without alcohol, whether a person realizes it or not.

I have only recently learned to find the triggers (relationship difficulties, work or lack of). Sometimes it is hit and miss, can't be perfect can we? Anger, frustration brings it on sometimes. As you said Alcohol is a depressant, I was counting on it, something to dull what I was feeling, anything, for a brief reprieve, I used to jog, cycle, feel the wind burn my face on a warm day. I can walk which makes me grateful everyday. My youth could not save me in the end so I had to settle for fortitude, it is what saves me today, so again, I am grateful...but I wish to feel what I used to feel. My therapist tells me that I have a wonderful opportunity to see life differently, and it will not always be beautiful or as peaceful as those days I used to have. She said the future is there for a reason, to move in a different direction, the lucky ones are the ones who recognize it, even with two "good" legs

I fell head first into addiction in a matter of months. It did not think about it at the time, after all I'd survived hadn't I? That is the most important thing wasn't it? As so, I could only bring myself to assess.
I could not sit up,nor could I lay down without the swirling mental turmoil in my head, of which I could not summon any control,nor relief,and after previously thinking myself a strong person,and I was(once.) But now,
the rushes of extreme adrenaline,as if I were on a roller coaster came. I could not cry,nor could I laugh. And no matter how much I reassured myself that I had at least lived thru it...the images of the cold bluntness of the pistol held to my temple kept returning out of nowhere with all its promise to bringing death. Each time,I shuddered at how close I'd come,and questioned how I'd managed to survive,then I tried to reassure myself, that it had to have been due to my having survived the many extreme incidents in my childhood,somehow wanting to give justifiable reason for it all,yet here I was.
Counseling? Why? I am alive! I just couldn't think nor face anything else,then.
I was in survivor mode,and yet I was scared to death of dying,and very afraid of living.
So with alcohol being a known depressant, and readily available, I indulged freely. Same w/Xanax or any other anxiety reducing drug(a depressant)...I had to have some kind of relief,even if it was self-medicated,or else I couldn't nor wouldn't have gotten thru it. The relief it(alcohol) brought was kind of like temporarily dying,yet coming back to life,once I'd slept it off,and so the cycle began.
I was all alone in this thing...my marriage had ended as a result,and it just so happened that the office where I had worked closed shortly thereafter this insanity all began. I was transfered to a new town many miles away from the scene of the crime(at the time,I thought it to be a godsend.) It was 4 years before I sought couseling,and went into a treatment center. I was never comfortable with any of it...but managed to get sober and quite temporarily
brain-washed with the AA program for 2 years...,when I relapsed back into drinking. It has been an off again on again thing for me ever since. I did not cry for ten long years,nor did I date the opposite sex for ten long years,because it seemed repulsive to me. I finally married again, and have been for 10 yrs. and now with two kids later...Today,I know that I am better,than I was in the beginning,after the trauma.
I still feel like the "odd man (person) out" most of the time,because no one can really understand,unless they've lived it.
Only one counselor (a unlicensed but well informed therapist in PTSD) has helped me understand from where I'd come...with AA it is all about the booze...and nothing else,with doctors it is either no pills or only pills,etc.
At one time,the day that I no longer carried my gun vigilantly was a day for celebration for me,when I called and told my mother...Of course she tried to understand,but I knew she was just going along with me to my frustrated mind...I wanted more from her. I needed more,and it was then that I understood what the old timers had meant by saying "it is a root hog or die world,"and "if you don't help yourself no one else will."
In the mean time, I doubted that most could hack what I'd lived thru/with the (unnamed to me)turmoil I lived with daily in my head,and I felt those things were outside of me,and that I had no control. Actually, I did not. I wanted back what I'd lost and they had.
I saw myself being jealous of the happy go lucky,and of those who'd never
been exposed to the demons of complete soul sickness,as I.
I thought,I used to be happy go lucky...why should they get off scott free?
It was a very bad time in my life...being so caught up in such a downward unpredictable spiral...but it is still not over,and I am convinced now,that it never will be completely over. I live with it,is all.
I have only hit on the tip of the iceberg here, regarding my journey thru hell,as most on here can easily fill in the blanks without my telling them,but I am now convinced that after twenty years of struggle since...that one never completely recovers but only learns to live with it,and cope with all of it,as best as one can.
It is crazy how the thoughts of suicide had/have often crept in...with so much desire to survive involved. Yet as long as it is a just a thought,(as I've been told) ...then that is all it is (a thought.)
I can take comfort in this forum for I know,that I am not alone. The next time I go out, I will remember that.

Hi Happy Daze,

welcome to the forum, and wow... a pretty indepth inspiring post. I must say, I related with some things you said in there like they were just yesterday. I think I have learnt enough to now live with it, as I guess you well know, the suicidal thoughts are challenging, but the inspiring words you highlight, being they are just thoughts, is exactly what I kept telling myself to get through the hell.

I am so glad that you found us, and that we are able to read and get some insight into your experience. It is inspiring to read others success, even though they have battled so hard to get it, at the end of the day, it is a definate success. I congratulate you Happy Daze for your hard work, persistent efforts and achieving a better life.

I think I learnt to come to terms with PTSD being around forever nearly a year ago now, and I just accept it as that, and work with it, instead of against it, as it just seems so much easier.

I can relate to you about the alcohol, as I have mentioned here before about some of my years with it, and basically wrecked a good few years of my life because of it, and other factors. I learnt to get myself off it, which was pretty tough at the time, but now I look back upon it, it seemed pretty easy compared to some parts of PTSD.

I always wondered about addiction though, regardless what type. You can say to a qualified professional, "I have ten beers per night, but I don't need those beers, as I can go without them if I want too", at which point you will be told your not an addict, yet; if you said "I have ten beers per night, and I must have them or I can't sleep", you would be classed as an addict to alcohol.

One of the spouses upon the PTSD course I did, had to have two drinks of scotch every night before she went to bed, to help calm her nerves and help her sleep, which she stated was because of the stress she endured from her husband with PTSD. I actually raised this point at the time, that this would actually classify her as an addict to alcohol, as she can't function without it, yet she denied that aspect to herself. Interesting thought process I thought to myself.

Anthony, thank you for your reply.
It has been many years for me in this struggle,and I have researched much... in attempt to improve my lot. It seems to me the sooner one gets help,or is able to accept it/help the better for the sufferer of PTSD.
I wish you well, and suppose that your hope in leadership will continue in helping other walking wounded souls,as yourself.
I have tried with all earnestness to understand persons on the other side,who live with us(others/normal not PTSD persons.) I can empathize but cannot see beyond from where I am to take it in. Sometimes it seems to me,that they may be hurting to an extent,but not to the point I can understand. I guess because of the differences in extremes:
Some souls are hurt to the point of no return,while others are hurt to the point of return is the difference.
Oh well, it is always my wish for all to be well,but reality in this life is for it not to be so.
Acceptance is the only thing I can do. If I do not accept things in life... on lifes terms,then I cannot be at all happy.
Love,tolerance,and acceptance are my only saving graces.