Guest Post: Depression & Addiction

This is a Guest Post from a wonderful strong woman in her 40s who would like to remain anonymous  This post really shows how depression can lead to addiction and how addiction can make depression worst after a while.

As a teenager I struggled with depression, not knowing it at the time I was very confused. I was the youngest of 9 kids. This was back in 1979 when I first swallowed a full bottle of pain medication only to wake up throwing up and not telling anyone about it. Not too long after, at the age of 19 I met my future husband, who in my mind was exactly what I needed. He had access to wonderful drugs and my ticket out of depression. My marriage lasted 12 years and we had 2 children together. After all the partying and depression I still managed to raise my kids with good morals, self respect and confidence. I am very proud of my children but not of myself as much. Needless to say I self medicated to try to fix myself. To fix the unhappiness I felt. I finally got some help at 33 and was put on the anti depressant Paxil. Thats when I took time off work and separated from my now ex husband.

I was clean from drugs for a good 5 years and had my third child before I relapsed. A year of postpartum depression got me into drugs again. I had been heavy into drugs for about 4 months when I had my second suicide attempt. After that I got into therapy for about 2 years and managed to leave my second failed relationship with the father of my third child. I also got on the methadone program for 5 and a half years and eventually with the help of my doctor I was able to ween myself off methadone. It took me 3 attempts to finally get off and my third attempt was successful because I dropped my dosage by 2 mg each week for a year and a half. In the end, for the last 2 months I got daily migraines, for which the doctor prescribed both Tylenol and Ibuprofen  It will be a year at the end of May 2013 that I've been off methadone and off my anti depressants that I had been on for 13 years. I'm very proud of it!