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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

> My adult life has been an ongoing struggle with addiction, depression, anxiety, chronic suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.

In my experience, addiction tends to be the "hemorrhaging femoral artery" of mental issues. It is certainly not the only one, and maybe not even the worst one, but, while it is active (i.e. the addict is using), everything else is untreatable.

I sincerely wish the author well.

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I think often depression develops when one has an ongoing struggle for years and years. Something you cannot solve no matter how hard you try. It could be a physical disability, a mental disorder or addiction. With all those things there is a tendency that no matter how hard one tries to overcome it, it just might not work. Over the years a deep depression can develop. In a way it is a systemic issue. Because if you try and try and no matter what you do, you can't fix your issues in the system you have to act in, what can you realistically do next.

I was thinking how addiction and depression are not always a simple cause-and-effect relationship. Sometimes it's the other way around, as in self-medicating behavior ("to drown your sorrow in a bottle"), and other times they're aspects of a larger complex feedback loop. The root cause of depression and suicidal ideation can be an intertwined whole, both inside and outside oneself, arising from the interactions between the self and the social environment, including family, work, media landscape, relationships and collective psychology.

There's no societal support for addiction, or mentally ill people that use substance, but aren't addicted. The absolute worst place to go for help is the mental health industry, which will actively work to ruin your life, and cut you off from important medical treatments for the rest of your life.

Completely agree. I would anecdotally say 90%+ of mental issues are drug induced.

I think that’s probably a bit specious in that a lot of drug seeking originates from seeking escape from mental health issues. They provide a short term surcease, but induce worse rebound and a feedback cycle. But I don’t think it’s drugs that induce mental health issues but rather exacerbate and compound.

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