I used to work at a drug treatment facitlity and I don't have to tell you that drug abuse and mental illness go hand in hand. Most of my patients were bonkers, full stop. Add to that, the wonderful charm of opiate addiction and you have quite an interesting bunch. When these people were truly in crisis, they refused to go hospital or to see their GP because of the way they were treated by the nurses. I had one female patient (extremely intelligent, former legal assistant to a large law firm) who had the unfortunate habit of skin popping. She had a horrible abcess on her abdomen and needed medical attention right away. She cried and told me how badly they treated her when she went in to the Emergency Department and then asked me what sort of thing would they do to her. I explained how they would most likely lance it, clean it all out, pack it and send her home with some lovely antibiotics. Two days later when I saw her at the clinic, she showed me how she had lanced it, irrigated it, packed it with gauze and was taking her brother's antibiotics!!!