Abstract
Many publications explore the causal relationship between psychiatric illness and drug abuse, but less information is available regarding the complications encountered in the diagnoses and management.
Manic-depressive psychoses are reported by several authors to be underdiagnosed, and some cases may actually present a picture of alcoholism. The presence of manic-depressives among drug abusers is demonstrated in this report, and case summaries of manic-depressive patients with variable patterns of drug abuse are presented. Patterns of drug abuse as self-medication or as part of an identification process are observed; however, a controlled experimentation independent of the cyclic pattern of the illness is possible. Availability appears to be the important social determinant as to the type of drug taken.