Is Self-Medication the Option to help You through Grief?

Losing someone you love has to be the most difficult thing that you will ever have to cope with in your entire life. There is no telling how you will deal with grief until it hits you out of nowhere and forces itself upon you. Whether the passing of a loved one was anticipated due to ill-health, old age, or whether their passing was completely unexpected, the intensity of that loss is no different.

There is also no right or wrong way to deal with that loss. From my perspective, being a medium and seeing so many people who are dealing with grief, I know that I can help through connecting people to their loved ones in spirit, and I can also help with getting to understand why they are going through this trying time. However, I also always advise my clients to seek the help of a professionally trained psychologist or grief therapist to help them to work through the emotions.

I often see people who are using over-the-counter medications and alcohol to dull the pain and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that’s not the option. There are so many reasons why you should not be buying medication for yourself that has not been properly prescribed by a doctor, to help you cope with the intensity of the emotional strife that you’re feeling through this time of grief and by the same token, alcohol is just not the answer at any point – excessive alcohol I’m referring to.

Whilst I fully support prescribed medications to help to stabilise moods and to help to give you strength to move through the day, numbing through drinking too much alcohol, does not allow you to work through any of the emotions that you’re feeling. All it does is suppresses the feelings for a short while and the fine line between using alcohol to numb the pain for a short while and becoming totally dependent on it, is way too tenuous to even contemplate.

To get to where you start the healing process, you need to allow yourself to move through all the emotions and stages of grief. So yes, there will be anger, there will be bargaining, there will be denial, there will be depression and eventually there will be acceptance. There is no set order in which these emotions arise. One can go through all five of them in one day and then swing back and forth. And there’s no telling how long these emotions will continue. I can only tell you what my guide always says and it’s this : ‘when you find yourself thinking of your loved one who has passed, and you smile, then know that the healing process has begun.’ And yes, it can take a long time to get to that point. She also always advises that people talk about their loved one, because talking about them, mentioning their names, and remembering all the good times you had together, also contributes to healing.

I think it’s important to remember that the soul who has passed back into spirit, is also going through a grieving process. They have left behind people who they hold dear to their hearts and just as you on the earth, can’t see or hear them, so they in the spirit world, can’t make you hear them. And when you surround yourself in the depths of grief, coupled with the intake of excessive amounts of alcohol, you create a denseness in your aura that becomes dark and difficult to penetrate. So not only is it difficult for your spirit guides to connect to you and to help you through your grief, but it’s even more difficult for your loved ones to penetrate your thoughts and allow you to feel them around you.

We have all experienced grief at some point in our lives. These last two years of covid has seen so many more people losing loved-ones in a dreadful way. Imagine your loved one lying deathly ill in a hospital bed, and you’re not allowed to go into the room to be with them – the trauma around these experiences for those who have had to go through them, is even more exacerbated when compared to times when all family was allowed to sit around their loved ones’ bed and help them through the passing process.

Please know that if this is you I’m referring to, this is a time that you have chosen to be on the earth. It doesn’t make the pain any less, it doesn’t make the grief any easier to bear. But what it does do, is bring your attention to those lessons that you sought to learn and those experiences you sought to go through in this lifetime and therein lies many great blessings.

If you are experiencing great difficulties and challenges in your life right now, and you are self-medicating, please honour yourself and seek out the help of a professional. You will thank yourself later down the line and I know that it’s what your passed loved one would want you to do.