Hello all. This is my first post on this sub. I'm glad to have found a community of support, it gets lonely sometimes feeling like you're the only one around you with a personality disorder. 

Anyways, I'm curious about drug use in people with BPD. For me personally, substance abuse has always been one of the major ways my BPD has manifested. I've been using legal &amp; illicit drugs since I was around 11. Very rarely do I feel comfortable functioning without taking something, and it's always been that way. I'm trying to work on this, and I've been trying to determine what's driving me to use in the first place. In my experience it usually results from 1) being overwhelmed by my emotional responses (i.e., feeling depressed, anxious, angry, etc.) and wanting to 'even out' or seek relief, and 2) desiring intense emotional extremes. The second reason is what interests me most; I'm sure almost everyone can understand the 'all-or-nothing' feeling. When I want to be up I want to be really up, &amp; when I'm down I want to be really down. Despite the fact that my emotional extremes cause me so much misery, I still want to feel things intensely. I don't know, it's pretty masochistic, and hard to describe. 

What do you guys think about drug use &amp; BPD? What drives you to use? 