Are Drugs Good For Mental Health?

Are drugs good for you?

The short answer is sometimes. But that’s only when used responsibly.

They’re not absolutely bad for you, because without this recent shrooms trip I would still be in the pits of depression.

I honestly believe that psychedelics will be used in mental illness treatment in the near future. However, when you’re depressed, you’re probably not going to use drugs for the right reasons.

I describe drugs as mental tools. They should be used responsibly to unlock certain aspects of your being. Like tools, they can accomplish things much more quickly and efficiently. But also like tools, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to get hurt. A jackhammer isn’t especially dangerous if you’ve been trained to use it, but you’re bound to hurt yourself if you play with it.

As someone who struggled with depression and anxiety for years, I realize that I was very much abusing drugs in order to cope with my mental illness. I know for certain that it drove me down deeper into the hole.

Drugs numbed me to the world, so I let myself fall without ever trying to catch myself. And then when I finally hit the bottom, I was still too numb to get up; to climb from the chasms of despair.

It definitely would have been smarter to ask for help, but the world teaches us that asking for help is weak.

It’s not.

But when your cries of help are continually rejected, you start to believe that the problem really is you and your weakness. So I refused to rely on anyone else, and I had to rely on drugs.

Like I said, the abuse of drugs is not good for mental health, but it did keep me alive long enough to finally address it. What I mean is that, had it not been for the drugs numbing me from life, I probably would have killed myself. Every time I smoked; every time I drank; every time I went on a three day Adderall binge was me saying I wish I could kill myself.

But I refused to kill myself, so I chose to do something that I thought would kill me, but kill me slowly. The way I saw it, either the drugs would keep me alive long enough to finally climb out of the abyss of depression, or they would eventually give me what I thought I wanted: Death.

Drugs can help you gain new heights of enlightenment. But if used in a reckless and irresponsible way, they will send you to the depths of hell, where escape becomes a miracle rather than a challenge.

I’m not saying that if you’re struggling with mental health problems that you should turn to drugs. Quite the opposite. Go find help. It’s hard, painful, and scary, but it’s the only way that you will ever get better.

It may not feel like it, but there’s always someone rooting for you. Someone who not only is willing to help, but wants to help. So many of us have experienced the emptiness of a dead soul and a broken mind, and we don’t want to see anyone else suffer through it.