Source: Huffington Post
“We don’t have the resources to meet the demand through the public system of care. I wish we did.”
BESSEMER, Ala. ― Broken. That’s how Trinity McGuffie, 37, would describe how she felt for almost two decades. As she reflects on her past, she twists her hands in her lap. In a quiet, steady voice, she recounts the tumultuous years of her untreated mental illness and drug use.
McGuffie started using drugs in 1996, when she was a student at Hayden High School near Birmingham, Alabama. Around that time, she also started experiencing crippling depression.
She found herself relying on weed, and eventually crack cocaine, to cope with the symptoms of her deteriorating mental health, which included hallucinations.
“I was trapped in my own mind. I was completely incapacitated and I had no control anymore,” McGuffie told HuffPost. “And to calm the voices, to calm the hallucinations, the only thing I could do was get high and stay in my room.”
Categories: America, Faith, God, Psychology, Religion, The Muslim Times, USA