I live with adverse-childhood-experience-related chronic anxiety and clinical depression that are only partly treatable via medication. Thus I endure an emotionally tumultuous daily existence. It’s a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly I will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. The lasting emotional/psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside the head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is treated with some form of medicating, either prescribed or illicit. My experience has revealed [at least to me] that high-scoring-ACE trauma that essentially results from a highly sensitive introverted existence notably exacerbated by an accompanying autism spectrum disorder, can readily lead an adolescent to a substance-abuse/self-medicating disorder, including through eating. Though I have not been personally affected by any addiction/overdose crisis, I have suffered enough unrelenting ACE-related hyper-anxiety to have known and enjoyed the euphoric release upon consuming alcohol and/or THC. However, the self-medicating method I utilized during most of my pre-teen years was eating, usually junk food. ... A physically and mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. But, sadly and unjustly, no such right exists. ... Mindlessly minding our own business on such matters has too often proven humanly devastating.

[Cont.] Left unchecked, chronic emotional/psychological abuse readily results in a helpless child's brain improperly developing. The trauma acts as a starting point into a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It has been described as a continuous, discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly you will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is prescription and/or illicitly medicated. To a significant degree, I know such self-medicating from personal experience. It basically amounts to non-physical-impact brain damage. The lasting emotional/psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one's head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. Really, a psychologically/emotionally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. But, sadly and unjustly, no such right exists. Meantime, serious PTSD trauma very often becomes a strong compulsion for substance abuse and debilitating addiction. With lead-ball-and-chain self-medicating, the greater the drug-induced euphoria or escape one attains from its use, the more one wants to repeat the experience; and the more intolerable one finds their sober reality, the more pleasurable that escape should be perceived. By extension, the greater one’s mental pain or trauma while sober, the greater the need for escape from reality, thus the more addictive the euphoric escape-form will likely be. The lasting mental pain resulting from trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one's head.