If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
What advice would you give to your younger self or a friend struggling with addiction?
Aoife
Community Manager Posts: 3,225 Boards Guru
Hi everyone,
We're posting a second discussion as part of our drugs project and this discussion will focus on sharing where to get support if you're struggling with addiction.
What advice would you give to your younger self or a friend struggling with addiction?
If you'd like to get involved in our other topic about managing peer pressure, you can read the discussion and comment by following this link.
We're posting a second discussion as part of our drugs project and this discussion will focus on sharing where to get support if you're struggling with addiction.
What advice would you give to your younger self or a friend struggling with addiction?
If you'd like to get involved in our other topic about managing peer pressure, you can read the discussion and comment by following this link.
Maybe somethings don't get better, but we do. We get stronger. We learn to live with our situations as messy and ugly as they are. We fix what we can and we adapt to what we can't. Maybe some of us will never fully be okay, but at least we're here. We're still trying. We're doing the best we can. That's worth celebrating too ❤
0
Comments
Addictions are a very intensive topic, but definitely giving support is the best thing you can do, in my opinion
I'd love to echo indepndent's note, that addiction is an illness. It does not make you a bad person, it does not define you, and it is separate from who *you* are.
To support a friend, I'd really emphasise that I am a safe person with no judgement. I'd let them know I am somebody they can talk to openly without feeling ashamed. I'd be nothing but proud of them for opening up and admitting they needed support. Such a huge and wonderful step towards their recovery
That. Above everything else. I've done pretty much everydrug I could get my hands on and for the most part enjoyed every expreience, and never had problems with addiction. The one and only regret I have is smoking tobacco.
I’m not particularly motivated to convince people to not to take any drug.
I’m am interested in making sure that accurate information is available to people so that they can make an informed decision on whether they want to try something.
With regards to tobacco, there’s a shed load of information out there already. Short if criminalising it, I’m not sure what else you could do
If I could go back and tell my younger self not to smoke, my younger self would tell me to fuck off. And quite right too.
Young people are risk takers by nature and they like to rebel. And good for them.
Better to be hedonistic when your young than at any other age.
I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say I met almost all of my best mates through recreational use of drugs. Everybody I knew took drugs through my teens and twenties - as you say it was normalised.
It would have been extremely difficult for me to have removed myself from that scene without seriously compromising my social life - not that I ever wanted to - I had a bloody good time and regret very little.
I’m not sure of the value of the question ‘what would you tell your younger self’. The whole point in being young is to learn much of this stuff by yourself, and that includes taking certain risks.