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hello everybody and welcome back to the addiction and co-occurring Disorders
Treatment manual today we're talking about unit 1 part 2 an introduction to mood disorders unit
one part one was an introduction to addiction so now we're going to move
on to mood disorders I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes in this part we're going to Define mood
disorders and explore how they may interact with physical health and addiction issues
mood issues include emotions like anxiety depression anger grief Mania guilt and can
cause or worsen other mental health issues or addictive behaviors so think about it
maybe you have a lot of anxiety when you're anxious for too long
you can start feeling run down and feeling hopeless and helpless and depressed or when
you're anxious you may be more irritable and more likely to lash out with anger
and then when you lash out with anger you may feel guilty for it so emotions can trigger
other emotions unfortunately negative emotions or unpleasant emotions typically trigger other
unpleasant emotions so you're just adding to that soup of what we call dysphoria or feeling unhappy
how have mood issues contributed to the development of addictive behaviors if you have any
how have you used different behaviors to escape from
your your negative feeling State your unpleasant feeling States addictive behaviors alter brain
chemicals remember we talked in the last part about dopamine and endorphins addictive behaviors
Ultra brain chemicals which can trigger depression anxiety Mania or other mood or mental health
issues including things like schizophrenia that's rare but it can happen it's important to recognize
that when you start altering dopamine and endorphins and serotonin it also affects
all of the other neurochemicals and can worsen the mood issues think about the person who uses
will just go big cocaine cocaine is a stimulant they may feel happier when they're using cocaine
because they are triggering all of their excitatory neurochemicals they're they're
happy neurochemicals but then when the cocaine leaves their system to be you know over to
oversimplify it when the cocaine leaves their system they don't have enough of those happy
chemicals anymore so then they end up feeling depressed and hopeless and potentially angry
the way people respond to different drugs or different addictive behaviors is usually pretty
similar and the detox from any particular drug or behavior is usually the opposite of
the intoxication so when you're using if you feel euphoric if you feel super happy then when you're
detoxing you're probably going to feel exhausted and depressed and guilt-ridden when you are
engaging in behaviors that help you relax in some way then when you're
not engaging in those behaviors or using those drugs then you're probably going to
feel more anxious and angry what you're seeing is the switch in neurochemicals
mood disorders alter your brain chemistry as well so you may try to self-medicate with
addictive behaviors when you're feeling depressed you may try to self-medicate
by consuming drugs or engaging in behaviors that increase those excitatory neurochemicals
it's important to treat all physical psychological and addictive issues at the same time now you're
not going to treat every single thing at the same time however it's important to recognize if you
are struggling with for example post-traumatic stress depression addiction and autoimmune issues
all of those things interact so it's going to be important to pay attention at the very least to
all four of those things if not begin addressing in some way shape or form all four of those things
a sober person with raging anxiety is going to have difficulty staying sober and a person who is
recovered from depression or anxiety but continues to use quote recreationally is still altering
those neurochemicals which will likely lead to a relapse of their mental health issues as well
as any physical or inflammatory issues they may have so spend about 50 minutes thinking back over
the past few years over your history in what ways has depression guilt anxiety anger or resentment
triggered addictive behaviors and it's important to list each one of those emotions
and think about how each one has triggered each other one that you'll kind of have a matrix but
recognizing when people feel depressed for example they don't have much energy they feel helpless and
hopeless so they often don't engage with others the way they want to they feel guilty because
they don't have the motivation the energy the wherewithal to get up and go to their kids
soccer game or go to work or whatever it is so thinking about how each one of those things each
one of those feelings may have triggered addictive behaviors and then thinking about ways in which
addictive behaviors or mood issues have triggered depression guilt anxiety anger or resentment