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Prudie - //
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I'll admit I've not read all the thread, it's gotten too long however I would ask you Andy on a personal note (and I never normally raise people's personal problems from the past) as you have mentioned enough times over the years of your past mental health issues that resulted in hospitalisation. Did you not try some of these legal and semi-illegal methods to ease the mind at the time? Many people probably use them as a private solution to help them to not end up in the very terrifying position you found yourself in back then? //
I think a time-line may help here.
I became a barman when I was eighteen, I stopped being a barman when I was twenty. During that time I had a try of most of the mainstream alcoholic drinks, and didn't enjoy any of them.
When I was twenty-six, at a party, I decided to see what being 'drunk' was like.
Over the course of the evening I consumed enough alcohol (vodka and Coke, I don't like either, but I made the effort) to go through the 'relaxed' phase, through to the violent illness phase.
Since I didn't enjoy any of the experience at all, I didn't touch alcohol again.
I was hospitalised at thirty-five, and I didn't try any legal or illegal substances to help me - only the prescribed medication I was given.
// Accepting this has formed one of the many long 'debates' for debate sake you like to have on AB it seems you are saying self-help should be frowned on and denied. //
I don;t believe self help should be frowned on and denied, I have never said, or inferred any such notion.
What I have done is pose an abstract question for the purposes of discussion, nothing more than that.