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Most people either 'grow out of it' - though I'm not talking about the move from adolescence to adulthood - or hit rock bottom to get to recovery. For the former, it's not as much recovery as it is moving on to a new point in life. For the latter, it's survival. After a certain point mental illness and/or self-destruction is unfeasible. Further yet, there are those people who self-injure infrequently and have jobs and relationships and marriages and who aren't ruled by their self-injury. It is something they do, not something that rules them.

It's cliched but if one is addicted to self-destruction it usually takes hitting complete rock bottom once, twice, fifteen times until it becomes clear that that is not how they want to live out the rest of their lives. Even then, sometimes the pull of it is too strong because self-destruction can become a way of living, coming as naturally as breathing.

It took the emergence of schizophrenia for me to get to that point. I loved self-injuring, I loved hospitalizations, I was comfortable and secure with depression. It really hit me out of nowhere and losing control of my mind like that made me realize I did not want to take my medications off and on, that I did not need therapy to decide that becoming worst would mean losing any sense of self I had.

You need to become uncomfortable and tired of being uncomfortable. That sounds stupid because most people would think who wants to self-injure and have an eating disorder but, really, to some people it's all they know, it's what makes them feel good, it's a sense of self.

Wanting to stop doesn't have to happen today, tomorrow, in a year, in five years. Some people never want to stop. However, it's more than possible and I can guarantee that though there's nothing that can feel the same as self-injuring or self-destruction there's plenty of good mixed with the bad out there.