Force PHP to NOT handle MariaDB / MySQL errors

I think about a year ago after an update to PHP it suddenly started handling database errors itself where as I have an else condition and function that is universal in my code. This is unacceptable as my database error handling function is much more graceful for users whereas PHP just kills the connection...because it's not designed to handle database errors.

How do I force PHP to ignore database errors while still handling the maximum sensitivity for all other (relevant) errors?