Page 23 - Self Medicate News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I guess i treated the inmates how i would want to be treated. after i worked here for four years or so, i had discovered that i was going to the bar more and more often after work to as we call it debrief. i knew something was wrong. i didn't know what to call it. i had started drinking to self medicate and discovered that worked real well, and inside a year, i was drinking well over a fifth a day. by the end, i was drinking over a half gallon a day. from there the alcohol just stripped away all of the other emotion and life became unmanageable. >> along with his prior criminal sexual conduct ...

>> reporter: the problem started in the '60s with deinstitutionalization and closing mental hospitals with no places for sick people to go. they turn to the street and often for jail. >> over the last few decades it has grown to where the jails have become the defacto mental health institutions. >> reporter: the crimes are usually non-violent, trespassing, stealing food. zick people self-medicate and steal to take drugs. >> you have to break the pattern. >> reporter: the staff at cook county often sees the same person dozens times. >> when you get arrested is there a part of you relieved? >> i...

I tried to show compassion. i guess i treated the inmates how i would want to be treated. after i worked here for four years or so, i had discovered that i was going to the bar more and more often after work to as we call it debrief. i knew something was wrong. i didn't know what to call it. i had started drinking to self medicate and discovered that worked real well, and inside a year, i was drinking well over a fifth a day. by the end, i was drinking over a half gallon a day. from there the alcohol just stripped away all of the other emotion and life became unmanageable. >> along with his pr...

Can't you be like the other siblings? there's love and a dependence but there's an intimacy and the issues do not get worked out. when you put that together with psychiatric illness and perhaps the cocktail of alcohol or anything else, then that's an indication for families that things actually can get out of control. they can get violent and they can get permanent such that a son can make an impulsive decision also and take his own life. >> it speaks to the fact that families can't -- they say they have intimate knowledge of day-to-day life with this person that is troubled, because oftentime...

Obtain drugs to self-medicate and have their own abortion. they are going across the border to mexico. so the state of texas, women's health is already in dire condition and they're only trying to make it worse which is why this next upcoming election and i know jessica would have something to say about this, is going to be so critical in texas. you have greg abbott on the republican side, the likely republican nominee, who is just egregious on these issues and many others versus wendy davis who would be a champion of women and women's health. >> you know, jess, a lot of these republican polit...