A Personal Story from Matt: Living With Dual Diagnosis

"It's like someone with diabetes--it's an illness that we have no control over. People should be more accepting and have a better knowledge about it."

Matt can tell you it's not easy having bipolar disorder. He remarks, "It's like riding a roller coaster that you really hate for the rest of your life. It's hard to keep friends. It's hard to keep your sanity. I wouldn't wish bi-polar disorder on my worst enemy. It's that much torture."

Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is often characterized by debilitating emotional highs and lows. As a result of this disorder, Matt endured extreme social isolation and peer ridicule throughout his childhood. "Parents refused to let me play with their kids," he remembers. "People living on my on my street told me that they didn't want their kids 'catching' what I had. I got beat up. People called me 'crazy' and said I was a little 'psycho boy.'"

As a result, Matt started drinking in a misguided attempt to gain social acceptance, believing that alcohol could transform him from an outsider into the life of the party. "I saw my uncle pop a couple of beers and start having fun. He'd laugh a lot and tell jokes that everybody laughed at," he recalls. "I wanted to be like that, so I started drinking to get that kind of reaction." Gradually, alcohol and soon drugs became Matt's coping mechanism for the rejection he faced due to his illness and the troubling behavior it caused. That kind of behavior is not uncommon among patients of bipolar disorder. In fact, one study found that 60% of patients with bipolar disorder also had a substance abuse problem1.

After Matt's parents started finding empty bottles under his bed, they cracked down hard on his alcohol abuse, locking up the family liquor cabinet and closely monitoring all other alcohol stored in the house. Unfortunately, however, he was already on to new things by that time, starting marijuana use in the 7th grade and then moving toward progressively harder drugs as he became older.

According to Matt, using marijuana gave him the social acceptance he always craved. He recalls, "I had all these people who were doing drugs with me and who accepted me. And when you're not being accepted for one reason or another, you try to find somewhere where you are accepted." Marijuana use also became a way for Matt to self-medicate. "I thought it was God's gift to people who didn't feel great about themselves. When I was on pot, I wasn't depressed. I felt normal."

What Matt didn't realise, until much later, was that it only exacerbated his problems. He says, "As soon as I was off whatever I was on, my problems were 50 times worse and I couldn't control myself. I'd get sad and agitated. I went off on people. I busted holes in walls. I still have a door in my closet that I literally punched through everywhere but the corners. I just sat there and beat up my door because I hated myself. That's why I wanted to be out-of-it all the time."

Matt turned to LSD when his tolerance for marijuana became too high. He remembers, "LSD was an escape from reality and it was available to me pretty much free if I sold enough of it." At one point, Matt was doing five or six tabs every other day. His LSD use, however, came to an end after a particularly terrifying trip. He says, "(While I was high) I thought I was a glass of orange juice and if I lay down, I was going to spill out all over the ground and die. People were trying to strap me to a gurney at the hospital because I was freaking out and I was so scared. I thought I was dying. I never wanted to feel that way again, so I stopped doing LSD."

But Matt's drug use didn't end there, instead of LSD Matt used cocaine, mushrooms, opium and other substances. Eventually, he ended up abusing heroin, shooting up when he needed a new method of ingestion to get him stoned. "I wasn't too afraid of needles, but I was so afraid I was going to catch AIDS. But at the same time, I was like, '(Who cares.) I'm going to be dead anyway by the time I'm twenty at the rate I'm going. I'm going to be fried.'"

Matt hit rock bottom after a couple of drug deals fell through and his debts started piling up. To continue to support his drug habit, Matt turned to stealing from his parents. He sold their TV, CD player, his mother and grandmother's jewellery, and money out of his dad's wallet all in an attempt to keep his addiction going. When it still wasn't enough, he broke into his parents' house and stole his dad's gun and a book of checks. He says, "I wrote two checks to my friend for a thousand dollars each and he cashed them. We both kept a thousand. Then I went on a big party spree, saying to myself that when it was over, I was going to put a gun to my mouth and pull the trigger." But when he came home, Matt's parents were waiting up for him, having received a call from the bank about the fraudulent checks. Frustrated with his behavior and desperate to get him help, he had only two choices: go to rehab or face being turned over to the police. Realizing that he faced seven years in CYA (California Youth Authorities) and prison, Matt agreed and entered treatment.

Finding treatment that properly addressed his substance abuse and bipolar disorder wasn't easy. "The first treatment program I went to was a real boot camp, and they didn't (care) about my mental problems," Matt says. "In a way, it was a good thing because I got a lot of discipline out of that place, but I was also pretty much going insane detoxing, missing my family, realising all the (problems I'd caused). I pretty much went insane and tried to kill myself."

During his third attempt at rehabilitation, he finally received the help he needed at Willow Creeks Treatment Center where they treated both his drug addiction and bipolar disorder. He remembers, "They had everything there for me. It was the biggest turning point in my life." At 16 years old, Matt was released and has been sober ever since.

When asked what he wants people to understand about mental illness Matt states, "It's like being someone with diabetes-it's an illness that we have no control over. People should be more accepting and (learn more) about it."

Matt also expressed many of the same sentiments when discussing substance abuse. "It's a disease. That person is sick and people should really do all that they can to help get that person clean." He goes on to say, "A person who's addicted can't do it alone. That's what meetings are for, that's what counsellors are for, and that's what friends are for."

Matt now lives in Northern California and was recently awarded the Youth Advocate Award by the Sacramento County Mental Health Association.

Adapted from www.drugstory.org