We drink away our pain sometimes because it feels good, better then what we were feeling before. We drink to forget, forget our failures, loses, constant reminders and things. We drink to live when we know longer feel like living , and sometimes we drink because we've already died inside. Either way we're drinking for the moment, and that's when becoming an alcoholic becomes a risk.

”Why me?” I asked shaking. “Its not fair God. I did nothing wrong. Even if I did, I don’t deserve this! I deserved to have parents! I deserved to be loved! And now my body turns on me? Why me? It doesn’t make any sense.” I threw my body on the ground, in the bathroom and curled into a ball. The only way I could feel safe.

I would like to treat all my mental health problems at a rehabilitation facility in Los Angeles called Bridges To Recovery. For this to happen I have to make my own money, and move out. I'd rent a house in LA to start with, so I can put my things there, then live at the facility for like a year while taking online classes, and starting a Bachelor's in film and television and an MFA program next at UCLA. I don't know if I'm stable enough to go to school if I freak out at Greyschool's workload.

Agoraphobia is a schizoaffective thing, since you feel like everybody is watching you, thinking negative things about you, and talking about you in general. This is merely a schizoaffective symptom that gets way better with medication, not to mention getting your head out of your hat. Agoraphobia is a thing, it makes people not feel well, it makes one paranoid, and only because it is the way it is. I also have anxiety and such; because I have multiple anxiety disorders give or take the way my body is built. I have PTSD, OCD, and generalized anxiety. I may feel well enough to do occupational therapy Zoom groups just in case.

Why am I passionate about neurodiversity?

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to start this story, because I don't truly know when it started. I just remember when I became aware.

If reports are to be believed, internet trolls have chased yet another famous face off of Social Media.

Savage warmongers or animal-loving pacifists? Uncivilized beasts or trainable inferiors? Early settlers of North America perhaps debated these questions amongst themselves when encountering the indigenous peoples of The New World. Regardless of the discussions that took place, one thing is certain: the decimation of Native American (NA) populations is a black mark forever ingrained in United States history.

Dear (Suburban) Black Girl,

On February 15th a 40 year old woman took her own life. I may not have known her, but she was one of the 7 billion+ humans I share this planet I call home with. She had a life to live, family and friends who loved her, and so much left to add to the shared experience we are all living through. But n0w she's gone. And though I didn't know her, I can't help but feel pangs of genuine anger and sadness.

An Open Letter to Lady Gaga -

“No one is going to hold your hand if it looks like that,” I remember the first time that you told me that. Eight years old, I had chewed my nail and picked the cuticle so badly I was bleeding. “I just need a bandaid,” half embarrassed, with zero understanding of how anxiety can manifest itself.

We drink away our pain sometimes because it feels good, better then what we were feeling before. We drink to forget, forget our failures, loses, constant reminders and things. We drink to live when we know longer feel like living , and sometimes we drink because we've already died inside. Either way we're drinking for the moment, and that's when becoming an alcoholic becomes a risk.

Blu sat in the cafe, looking out the window at the early morning action on Pike street, picking up fragments of conversation from the people around him. "the 2008 elections are coming up", he heard the woman at the next table tell her companion.

I got this tattoo when I was 18 years old. I was struggling with substance abuse since I was 14 years old. Anything from weed to extremely hard drugs. I went to treatment a few times, at that age I was forced so I didn’t take it very seriously. It was hard on my family financially and emotionally. Eventually I pulled myself out and started working full time and made something of myself. What inspired me to get this prayer on my body was to remind myself of my past but to also honor those who have passed. I grew up in Maple Grove, MN. Well. For my teen years I did. My group, whatever you want to call it. The “popular” the “sport people” the “pretty people”. Ew but yes I belonged to them. We all used drugs. Bad drugs. Some socially, some daily. I can count on both hands how many friends I have lost due to heroin overdoses. Being that I was nearly one of them, but I survived my OD in 2012. When I was resuscitated three times, all I can remember when I went out was that it was complete darkness. There was no light. There was no “my entire life flashed before my eyes” I was just done. I was in the ICU for 8 days. I didn’t have medical insurance. It hurt me in so many ways. I got this prayer to keep me guided, but also to honor my friends who didn’t get as lucky as I did. Now, recently, fast forward to 2020. My mother was a avid alcoholic since the age of 13. She hid it pretty well throughout my life as she was very in and out of it during my childhood. I knew at the age of 7 that if my mom started shaking, she needed a beer. Or preferably vodka. She battled and battled to get sober. She attended various treatment programs anywhere from 30 days to 120 days. My dad wouldn’t really allow her to see me due to this issue she had. He had 100% custody due to the fact. When I got my own car at 16 I would go and see her frequently. She drank because she lost her marriages and children because of drinking. However it never helped her stop. I tried my most possible best to try to inspire and influence her to do better and be better over the last decade. I gave her two of my pure bred Labrador retrievers so she felt like she had a purpose in life. She didn’t work. So she was home every day, all day. My step dad worked to take care of her. Over the last year she progressively got worse. She would say and do very mean things to me while drunk. She would call the cops on me knowing it would screw me over (license issues) we got into a very bad fight one day as well and to this day it makes me sick. My mom, at the age of 56, had lost this battle with addiction and alcoholism. On July 3rd, 2020. My 4th of July weekends will never be the same. I never got to see her speak or open her eyes since she was rushed to the ER for liver failure. Her skin was bright bright yellow. She told the doctors she wanted to die. She didn’t want any machines hooked up to her, she wanted to die. They drugged her up and let her go over a course of 14 days. I was able to speak to her and get the last twitch of a smile out of her... I sat there for a hour and asked why the world was taking my mom from me at the age of 26. Why couldn’t she have just snapped out of it like I did. She had me? The dogs? My step dad? She had a easy life? Why? Why did she want to die so badly.... she killed herself with the bottle. Not only was her liver failing but so were her kidneys. She then got a infection in her brain which took over her ability to function. Talk, look around etc. We transferred her to a hospice where she passed less than 24 hours. We said bye to her as she was already passed away. I won’t forget how I saw struggle all over her face, blood not wiped up around her nose and lips. Etc. but they had the nerve to tell me she peacefully went in her sleep. She was cold. More vibrantly yellow. I said goodbye to my mom on her deathbed at the age of 26. I miss her so much. And I miss my friends. This is why I have this tattoo. To honor those who have struggled with addiction and who have lost the battle with addiction.

I was diagnosed with anxiety and derealisation/depersonalisation in 2019, my last year of school, and I’m really proud to say that I know a lot more about myself and my mental health issues than I did back then. I started off that year with daily panic attacks and derealisation episodes, a terrifying mindset, and more tears than I’ve ever cried before. If you're interested in hearing more about my experiences overcoming anxiety and derealisation in year 12, you can read the personal essay I wrote here, but today I wanna talk about some of the techniques that have helped me cope with these mental health challenges since then.

Mental health can play a vital role in your life. Whether you may have a mental illness or are going through some circumstances that can affect your mental health, it is definitely something that should not be ignored. Let's be real with ourselves: no one is perfect. We all have flaws and insecurities. They don't make us any better than anyone else nor do they make us any worse than others.

Let's face it: all of us face some kind of bullshit on a daily basis. It's either from being at work or getting a super weird message that throws off your whole day. I've been there way too recently than I care to admit, but hey, bullshit happens. It's how we deal with it that really makes us be able to move on from it and continue to live our lives. It sometimes blows my mind how I can hold onto something way longer, or think I'm completely over something because I told myself to be over it, but it pops it's ugly head up six months later. I used to think boxing up the bullshit and pretending it didn't affect me would work. Compartmentalize and deal with it later. Guess what? Didn't work! So what is there to do now?

These walls that once seemed so familiar to me is now unfamiliar in the sense of I cant get a hang of what it is that I see. I feel like I am a monkey that doesn't know how to hang on the same tree she was just hanging on, just before you met her. Heart racing, mind pounding, I don't think thats what I meant to say, I think I meant to say heart thinking, mind beating, thats not right either, either way, this is how my brain is functioning in the same place I used to be okay. Key word is used to in the sense of no longer, no longer capable of breathing how I used to. No longer capable of smiling in the way that I used to. No longer able to live like I used to, because this feeling of how i'm feeling is not something i'm used i'm not feeling too chipper even though I feel i'm supposed to, and i'm not too happy with feeling i'm how supposed to, knowing my heart is thudding out of my chest. Like a baby chick stuck in its egg, or a baby bird that can't fly out of its nest, I am not at my best, and this is my talking in a manner of being pretentious, but I cant help it i'm selfish.

Anxiety was one of my earliest diagnosis back when I was 17. It hung around for a few years but between the ages of 21 to 25, it barely effected me at all. This is how that happened.

Everything was orange. The entire night glowed with the light from the street lights. The shadows were long and opaque stretching over the concrete sea across from the football stadium. It was if we were the only car in the parking lot. Yet, we were surrounded by dingy Civics and hatchbacks stuffed, to their torn headliners, of personal belongings - backpacks, plastic bins for organization, homework. The seats inside her all black 2002 Toyota Tocoma were grey with little blue and red pinstripes. There was nothing particularly flashy about the little truck. It had four doors, all worked accordingly. The seats were used but not torn or dirty - except for the cigarette hole in the passenger-side backseat. I am still unsure how it got there, whatever memory responsible for creating that blemish had been forgotten since I had entered her world. We both shared the front-right seat. Half cuddling, half crammed between the opposing armrests, the window, the center console, and the glovebox. This was not a space built for two people. Her head was nested in that little pocket between my arm, shoulder, and chest. In those moments we felt like the only people in the world. That moment felt eternal. Time was neither happening nor had happened. We simply sat there and endured.

My journey through a psych ward was a battle between sanity, reason and reality.

It's so difficult to explain, doesn't matter how much a person wants to understand you they just don't quite get it. I watched my mom suffer from it, she freaked me out and I would constantly yell at her to take her meds, I always thought that was the answer to everything. Pop one pill and she would go back to functioning like a normal "sane" person.

I never really considered myself as someone with a life calling until one day I woke up and thought, “I’m going to save the world -- as a porn star.”

I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to start this story, because I don't truly know when it started. I just remember when I became aware.

Some things aren't for everyone, and I've never been the type of personal that finds solace in meditating. I feel worse after a moment of silence than the rare occasion of feeling better. Although, all those things are true, I do meditate and ground myself, but I don't set aside time for it, I take whatever silent moment I have on the train, or in my car, at work to just recognize everything within me, and surrounding me. My mind is a beautiful thing but it has a hard time being quiet, which is why I don't meditate for too long, and I refuse to sit down crossing my legs and open up doors i will be forced to shut back again. Then again, maybe that's my problem, maybe that's why this meditation thing only works for me while i'm busy because i am capable of escaping and finding a busy activity to do moments after, versus having to sit an entire car ride reflecting, or walking into a place in silence, just reflecting, maybe I like walking meditation, because by the time i get back to it, it doesn't hurt anymore, but in a way time, all that busy time, healed those wounds. How do you meditate though, when you feel like this:

An Awakening

Recently, I was asked how it felt to be depressed. It really lit a spark in me, because I never thought about how I physically felt. I got so wrapped up in that question and I'm going in on my personal experience with depression.

In today’s society mental health is something that is often overlooked, looked down on, or not taken seriously at all, and is rarely talked about. Since issues like eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, addiction, and mental illnesses are such a taboo subject it leaves the people who are struggling to feel like they shouldn't talk about the challenges that they are facing. In today’s world, where social media runs just about everything and everyone has such strong opinions, it can be difficult to open up about these issues. We can oftentimes feel alone, like our feelings don’t matter, like no one out there cares, or that we just need to put on our big people pants and get over it like the adults that we are, but that is not the case at all. There are people who care, these are not struggles that anyone can just suck up and get over, and most importantly, you are not alone. So in lieu of September’s National Suicide Prevention Month, we are going to discuss the top five signs that someone you know might be struggling with their mental health. It is however important to remember that not everyone's the same, some people may show all of the signs listed and more while others may show none at all. This is why it is so important to just be there for one another, lend a shoulder to cry on, and really listen to what the people around us have to say. You never, know, it could be life changing for someone just to have a listening ear.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, otherwise known as OCD, is a mental health condition which affects 12 in every 1,000 people in the UK, yet is relatively misunderstood by the general population. Most people associate OCD with physical repetitive or obsessive behaviours, such as colour coordinating items in a particular order or locking a door numerous times. However, OCD manifests itself in a variety of ways, some of which are invisible to the average person.

I grab a fistful of fries and stuff it in my mouth. In my other hand I hold the burger. I shove it in my mouth violently. I feel a tear rolling down my cheek. The urge to eat was too strong and I couldn't deny it. I hate myself. Why can't I control myself? Why can't I stop? I'll be better tomorrow. I won't eat tomorrow and I'll spend the day at the gym working off all of these calories.

Hello, my name is Aliex and I decided to start a Blog to raise awareness in mental health. Me personally, I do not think that there is not enough talk surrounding this matter as it affects so many people, men, and women in many different ways. Back in July, I was diagnosed with Borderline personality disorder, Anxiety, Stress and Depression. This did not come as a surprise as I had so many mixed emotions such as feeling lost, unwanted, confused, sad and even suicidal.

I struggled with my body for as long as I can remember though I never had a problem until I entered middle school. Since I was four years I saw myself with a massive stomach even in reality I was skinny. I was always active as a child, I never really overate, and my family had a pretty healthy lifestyle so even now I don't understand where those thoughts came from. They were just there and I continue to live with them.

Stones. Pounds. Kilograms. Something I have not seen in a while. Not since m mother threw out our tired old scales thats purple shade had faded more than the hairs on my father's head. They had only been collecting dust on the top landing for years and were practically stained that mousy-brown colour that, quite frankly, looked like what I deposited down the toilet after a horrendous dinner made by my grandmother, who -in her prime- was an amazing cook, not it was as if an oven was product made by aliens and food was edible fresh out of the freezer!

The bell on the door chimes as she walks into the 24-hour diner. The waitress sees her and nods, knowing her order. She puts in the order before Laura has even taken a seat, in her red leather booth by the window. She slurps down the extra-large chocolate shake. The waitress approaches her to ask if Laura would like some napkins, but it’s too late. Laura’s straw is already swirling around the last bit of the shake. At this point, there is only whipped cream and a cherry remaining. With it, she ordered a burger and onion rings.

COVID-19 is a haven for narcissists and psychopaths to amp up the abuse at home. It is an opportunity for them to be menacing, abusive and to sabotage the career of the target, whilst disrupting the children and family and subjecting them to persistent chaos.

Eliminating sociopathy from the gene pool, now that is a concept. If we could rewrite the genes of a baby at conception, this idea could work. It is one way to treat genetic disabilities at any rate, and since I have 22q, Velocardiofacial syndrome, it is a way to treat this disorder that researchers at major clinics like Stanford are working on. Narcissism or sociopathic spectrum mental illness is not always something that you are born with but rather it is something that a person can develop due to something that happens at the age of 2 or 3, due to parenting styles.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by obsessive and repetitive thoughts or behaviors that severely affect a person’s quality of life. Both people with OCD and other types of anxiety disorders battle challenging mental health conditions that are made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether a person is struggling with incessant fear about the virus, fear of the unknown, or social and economic insecurity, the normal level of worry that most people experience may be exacerbated in some people with OCD.

Why am I passionate about neurodiversity?

For years, I brought myself unnecessary trauma by ignoring that I was, in fact, disabled. I suffered from Generalized Anxiety Disorder, OCD, and Bipolar Depression since I was very young. Instead of kindness and sympathy, my symptoms were met with shame, from my family and my peers, 10-year-old me battled with comments like, “Nothing in your life is that bad! Snap out of it!” or, “You’re such a waterworks,” even, “There goes Ms. Perfect, worrying about everything.” My neurodivergence was a burden, a downer, a destruction from the things that needed to get done. Popularity eluded me, and I blamed my inability to relate to other kids, my weight, anything besides my emotional health because I didn’t realize my brain was different.

”Why me?” I asked shaking. “Its not fair God. I did nothing wrong. Even if I did, I don’t deserve this! I deserved to have parents! I deserved to be loved! And now my body turns on me? Why me? It doesn’t make any sense.” I threw my body on the ground, in the bathroom and curled into a ball. The only way I could feel safe.

If I could, I would go back to being a young teenager and know what I know now. That's probably what a lot of people think but I literally dream of it.

Startled, she finds herself alone. She doesn't know what time it is, perhaps midday? She knows that he's lying bareback on a concrete floor.

I would like to treat all my mental health problems at a rehabilitation facility in Los Angeles called Bridges To Recovery. For this to happen I have to make my own money, and move out. I'd rent a house in LA to start with, so I can put my things there, then live at the facility for like a year while taking online classes, and starting a Bachelor's in film and television and an MFA program next at UCLA. I don't know if I'm stable enough to go to school if I freak out at Greyschool's workload.

I’m no stranger when it comes to baring my soul. I believe my vulnerability strengthens me. But I’m pretty private about the most traumatic events and patterns in my life, because well, I figure no one really needs to know, we all carry life’s baggage, and for the most part, there are many things that are nobody’s business.

One in Five Canadians will experience a mental health issue at some point in their lifetime, so why is it that average “wait times for outpatient services are six to nine months”?(CBC News, 2015). Mental Illness is a common, yet often unacknowledged reality for many individuals; it’s imperative that medical concerns are treated quickly and efficiently no matter what the concern is. However most Canadians struggling with mental health issues, do not have that quick and efficient treatment for something that could potentially be unnoticeably life threatening. Despite there having been “a 30-per-cent jump from the same month the previous year.” (CBC News, 2011) in ER visits at one hospital alone.