Addiction does not always show up on its own. You may be trying to stop drinking while also dealing with depression. Maybe anxiety is one of the main reasons you started using drugs in the first place. You might have trauma symptoms that get worse when you are sober.
When a substance use disorder and a mental health condition happen at the same time, they are often called co-occurring disorders. You don’t need to know which problem started first to get help. What matters is addressing both.
What Are Co-Occurring Disorders?
A co-occurring disorder means you are dealing with both addiction and a mental health condition. That could mean alcohol use disorder and depression. It could be opioid addiction and PTSD. Someone else may be dealing with stimulant use and severe anxiety. The combination looks different from person to person.
Which Mental Health Conditions Commonly Appear With Addiction?
Depression and anxiety are common among people with substance use disorders. PTSD, bipolar disorder, ADHD, schizophrenia, and other psychiatric conditions can also occur alongside addiction. The symptoms are not always obvious.
Maybe you think you drink because it helps you sleep, but anxiety is keeping you awake most nights. You may use stimulants because you feel exhausted and unmotivated for days at a time. Someone with trauma may use opioids or alcohol because being numb feels easier than dealing with certain memories. These patterns can be easy to miss when substance use has become part of everyday life.
How Can Mental Health Symptoms Affect Substance Use?
A substance may seem to help at first. Alcohol can make you feel less anxious for a few hours. Drugs may make painful thoughts easier to ignore. Stimulants can give you energy when depression makes getting out of bed difficult.
The problem is that the relief usually wears off. Then you may be left with the original symptoms plus hangovers, cravings, withdrawal, relationship problems, or trouble at work.
You use again because you feel worse. That cycle can continue for a long time. If mental health symptoms are part of why you use, treating the addiction alone may leave you dealing with the same triggers afterward.
Why Can Treating Only the Addiction Leave Problems Behind?
Getting sober can make some mental health symptoms easier to see. You may stop drinking and realize the anxiety is still there. Depression may feel more noticeable once drugs are no longer covering it up. Trauma memories may come back when you are no longer using something to shut them out.
That can be difficult, especially early in recovery. If those symptoms are ignored, returning to alcohol or drugs may start to feel like the easiest way to get relief.
Treatment for co-occurring disorders looks at both sides. You can work on staying sober while also getting help for depression, anxiety, trauma, or another mental health concern.
What Does Treatment for Co-Occurring Disorders Usually Include?
Treatment usually starts with an assessment. Your care team needs to know what substances you use, how often you use them, what happens when you stop, and what mental health symptoms you have been experiencing.
From there, treatment may include individual therapy, group therapy, medication, addiction treatment, or a combination of services.
At Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana, we offer residential and outpatient care, individual and group therapy, family therapy, and medication-assisted treatment when appropriate.
Your treatment plan may change over time. That is not unusual. Sometimes certain symptoms become easier to identify after you have been sober for a while.
How Can You Tell When You May Need Dual Diagnosis Treatment?
Look at what tends to happen around your substance use. Do you drink whenever your anxiety gets bad? Do you relapse during periods of depression? Maybe you start using again when certain memories or situations come up.
You may also have tried mental health treatment before without talking about your drinking or drug use. Or you may have gone through addiction treatment while saying very little about depression, panic attacks, or trauma. If part of the story keeps getting left out, treatment may keep missing something. Tell your provider about both.
How Can the Right Treatment Program Support Both Conditions?
You shouldn’t have to choose which problem to treat first and hope the other goes away. A program that addresses both addiction and mental health can help you work on cravings, triggers, relationships, mood symptoms, and the reasons you reach for substances.
Maybe you need better ways to handle panic. Maybe depression makes it hard to stay connected to people. You could be dealing with trauma that you have avoided for years.
Those issues do not disappear just because you stop using. Treatment gives you a place to work on them without going back to the same coping habits.
Find Addiction Treatment at Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana
You do not need to have everything figured out before asking for help. If you drink because you cannot quiet your anxiety, say that. If depression keeps leading you back to drugs, say that too.
At Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana, we work with people dealing with addiction and co-occurring mental health concerns in Baton Rouge. Contact the Serenity Treatment Center of Louisiana at (225) 361-8445 to learn more.
