"I'm just tired of being tired"

I have the privelege of providing mental health care for people suffereing from addiction that enter into residential rehab. As a psychiatrist, I evaluate the clients in rehab and find a surpising number of people with PTSD that use drugs to cover, mask, or self-medicate high amounts of anxiety and PTSD symptoms. PTSD symptoms are hard to deal with. In order to recover, one has to discuss the memories to somehow dissociate the pain from the memories., But, frankly that is too hard to deal with, without help. So as a consequence, people start using drugs before they even know that treatment for PTSD exists, and then get addicted. What makes a person want to give up drugs? I think a couple things. One is that they know there is another way to deal with the severe anxiety and depression from PTSD and that PTSD is treatable. Another is that people finally say, they are just worn down from the drug use. I understand that to be expressing a desire to live and not die. When people say that, it is my privelege to help them. I have been seeing that kind of frank honesty in many of the rehab clients, trying to throw off the shackles of addiction. Many do well!