When people ask me why I write about mental health and addiction, I tell them it’s because of Matthew Perry. He inspired me to learn more about mental health and addiction. He inspired me to want to help people who are struggling. I want to continue telling his story, be his voice. Matthew’s journey with addiction and what he went through is a story I want to keep telling. Everybody’s struggle with mental health and addiction is different but going on that journey to recovery

Not everything that is portrayed in the media is true to real life. It’s far from it. They make it seem like it’s an easy fix. Go into treatment and be healed. As much as people want to represent mental health and addiction, it doesn’t come off as helpful or inspiring. There’s so much more to it than just saying that a character is struggling with mental health. Film and television portrayals of severe mental health problems tend to be wildly inaccurate. And they often presen

During the war, there was a lot going on. There was fighting going on in Europe, families being torn apart, there was hardly any food because it was rationed, and wives and mothers didn’t know if their husbands and sons were going to come home alive. It was a very challenging, horrible, brutal time in history. Along with everything that the soldiers went through and the experiences that they witnessed, they didn’t just bring home physical scars, but mental scars. They saw thi

If drugs and alcohol is all you know, it’s going to be hard to build a life outside of those things, but it can be done. You would have damaged the relationships that may not be able to be fixed. Knowing someone with addiction is hard. They want to do whatever they can to help you, but you don’t want anything to do with them or accept the help they are offering. When you’re caught up with addiction, it becomes your purpose in life. The desire to get high makes you wake up in

You don’t want to put yourself in a situation that will challenge your sobriety. It’s easy to be reckless when you can use substances as a reason or an excuse, but once you find that road to recovery, you want to keep moving forward. The first 90 days in sobriety are the most important, but it’s also the most dangerous. You already know how much effort it takes to become sober if you’re already recovering from an alcohol use disorder. You’ll want to take every precaution to

When I was a kid, my brother and I were besties. I couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything or go anywhere without him. I couldn’t be away from him. In the early days of elementary school, if I didn’t see him on the playground at recess and lunch, I would get anxious and I would start to panic. I would start to tear up and race around the school yard until I saw him. I needed to see him to prove that he didn’t leave me alone. The first instance of separation anxiety was when I was ki

When it comes to socializing, it’s a challenge with someone with autism. We try to make friends, we want to make friends, but we don’t know how to approach people. We don’t know when it’s a good time to go up to someone and talk to them. When we do get the chance, we don’t know what to say or how to say it. We don’t know if the person we’re talking to is listening just to be nice or if they feel like they have to listen because they know its rude to walk away. We feel like no

When it comes to addiction, you have to think about if addiction runs in your family. A lot of the time, you know someone that has struggled with some sort of addiction. Some people will stay away from drugs and alcohol because it’s something they know. They knew someone close to them that relied on drugs and alcohol so they did whatever they could to not go down that same path. In other cases, addiction is all someone knows. Existing research showed that annually, 11.8 mill

The holidays are stressful for everyone. There are a lot of things that need to be done like prepping for family that are coming from out of town and a lot of things to see like the Christmas lights that people have put up, but if you throw mental health into the mix, it’s not going to be fun for everyone involved. There’s always a vision where you have to be the perfect host, you have to provide everyone with the perfect meal, give the perfect gifts, but as time goes on, the

Schizophrenia remains one of the most misunderstood and stigmatized illnesses today. Having a mental health condition isn’t easy. You will do whether you can to relieve the symptoms. You will do what it takes to not hear the voices in your head. Going through something like schizophrenia can be traumatic. You want to find something that will make the voices stop. Living with schizophrenia can feel lonely. People who have the condition may feel like they have a severed connec