Mental Illness or Addiction: What Are You Really Dealing With?
When your child starts spiraling, nothing prepares you for the confusion. You don’t know what you’re looking at.
Are they using drugs? Are they depressed? Are they angry? Mentally ill? Addicted? Lazy? Lost?
You try to figure it out — not because you’re nosy — but because you’re desperate to save them.
I’ve been there. And I still don’t always have the answers.
The Line Between Addiction and Mental Illness is Blurry
What no one tells you is that addiction and mental illness don’t usually show up alone. They show up together. They feed off each other. And it can feel impossible to know where one ends and the other begins.
Is he smoking weed because he’s anxious? Or is he anxious because he’s been using for too long?
Is she depressed, or is she just numbed out by the pills she won’t admit she’s taking?
That chicken-and-egg cycle breaks your heart and your brain — and makes it hard to know what help to even ask for.
Labels Can’t Fix What’s Broken
There were days I wished someone would just tell me — bipolar, ADHD, addiction, schizophrenia — something. I thought a label would make it easier. It didn’t.
Sometimes, labels make it worse. They put your child in a box that no one wants to open.
Mental illness gets sympathy. Addiction gets judgment.
But what if your child is dealing with both?
They May Not Even Know What They’re Feeling
The scariest part of this journey is realizing that your child might not even know why they’re hurting.
They shrug. They go silent. Or they lie.
And somewhere in your gut, you know the truth — they’re in pain, and they’re self-medicating because it works… until it doesn’t.
What Matters More Than the Diagnosis
Eventually, I stopped obsessing over the right diagnosis and started focusing on the right support:
For him: Real treatment from professionals who understand co-occurring disorders.
For me: Support groups, therapy, and spaces where I didn’t have to pretend I was okay.
You Are Not Failing. You’re Just Human.
You’re not supposed to know how to do this. You’re not supposed to be a walking DSM-5 or a crisis intervention expert. You’re a parent. And you're doing the best you can.
Let go of needing to define it perfectly.
Just keep showing up. Keep learning. Keep loving — from a place of strength, not fear.
And when you’re not sure what you’re dealing with?
Start with this: you’re dealing with a child who’s in pain. The rest can come later.
For more episodes and real talk from one mother of an addict to another, listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your shows. You're not alone.
