Are tattoos harm?

Weird. On Facebook a friend of mine just posted that she's 10 months sober. I had no idea she was in AA. She took a picture of her chips and posted the picture. I am so proud of her. She used to smoke a lot of pot in high school, and I can imagine her being an alcoholic. She's a tattoo artist, and it's funny how many of them are sober. I should give her a call and see if she wants to go to a meeting and tattoo me.

My dad the other day said he read a study that tattooing is a replacement for cutting. Haven't we talked about this already? I haven't found the study, but this sounded interesting:

"Now, 10 tats is a lot of tats. Are you a self-harmer? I don't know. Are you distorting yourself to make yourself special or different, maybe even to get attention? Probably...that's where the BPD comes in. You are naturally impulsive and you like tattoos. Hence, 10 tattoos. The real question is this...and this is the conceptual/theoretical relationship between tattooing and BPD -- do you get a secret pleasure from the relinquishing of control and symbolic victimhood associated with experience of getting a tattoo? If so, that's what you need to look at because it brings us into the realm of self-harm and sado-masochism."

I have 8.