Substance abuse is a serious mental health disorder and needs to be treated as a mental illness and not disregarded as a lack of self control and akin lifestyle choice.
Julie’s story can still inspire hope for millions of people battling with addictions disorders, albeit her name is changed to protect her identity.
Julie’s story emphasizes this condition. While cooccurring mental illnesses just like depression and bipolar disorder that result from traumatic experiences early in their lives, quite a few victims of substance abuse and addiction disorders experience other. Normally, julie was born into a middle class family. Fact, she lived in a nice house with her parents and brother. Now let me tell you something. Her parental rights were terminated by a court, she pleaded with Social Services to be placed in foster care gether with her baby. What the world did not see was that her parents drank sometimes a lot. At 12, she was raped and became pregnant. Her mother was frequently at the local pub or out partying, Julie was a sad and isolated child. Her father began sexually abusing her, when she was eight.
During her teen years, Julie began drinking and abusing other substances after the loss of her child. She also began hearing voices. Whenever burning herself over the gas stove or cutting herself in exchange for God protecting her sons or providing food for them, she began to make deals with God. She continued drinking and using drugs now with her husband. She could not, she tried to stop. She married and had two sons. Have you heard about something like that before? Julie traveled everywhere she could think to find them, eventually ending up in NY where she prostituted herself to survive and to feed her growing drug habit. One day, her husband picked up the boys from school and vanished. Nonetheless, today, Julie continues to work on her recovery. For example, found on a street and hospitalized, Julie was returned to a community mental health center and hospital in Massachusetts for treatment.