Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you use something to cope
When someone keeps doing the risky thing after every explanation, the missing piece is usually not information. The pull is simply louder than the knowledge.
Which means another lecture is mostly wasted breath, while changing what is within reach is not. Fewer bottles in the house, a route home that avoids the shop, something planned for the hour when it usually happens. Do this for yourself as readily as for someone you are worried about, because nobody is above it.
If you are using something to cope and it has become hard to stop, please speak to a doctor before changing anything.
Qur’an and Sunnah
consider the one who has taken his own desire as a god, whom God allows to stray in the face of knowledge (Quran 45:23). Straying in the face of knowledge is exactly the thing being described, and more knowledge was never the missing piece.
أَفَرَءَيۡتَ مَنِ ٱتَّخَذَ إِلَٰهَهُۥ هَوَىٰهُ وَأَضَلَّهُ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ عِلۡمࣲ وَخَتَمَ عَلَىٰ سَمۡعِهِۦ وَقَلۡبِهِۦ وَجَعَلَ عَلَىٰ بَصَرِهِۦ غِشَٰوَةࣰ فَمَن يَهۡدِيهِ مِنۢ بَعۡدِ ٱللَّهِۚ أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ
[Prophet], consider the one who has taken his own desire as a god, whom God allows to stray in the face of knowledge, sealing his ears and heart and covering his eyes- who can guide such a person after God [has done this]? Will you [people] not take heed
Qur’an 45:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a laboratory experiment, people whose self-control had just been drained by a demanding task drank more when alcohol was freely available. Capacity and access did the work, not what anyone understood about alcohol. Lab drinking is not real life, but it fits what most people notice in themselves at the end of a wearing day.
Christiansen P, Cole JC, Field M. (2012). Ego depletion increases ad-lib alcohol consumption: investigating cognitive mediators and moderators.. Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Behaviour follows what is near and easy far more reliably than it follows what you know.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Distant health warnings move almost nobody. The cost that lands is the one showing up this month: your memory, your marks, the work you know you could be doing.
If stopping has been harder for you than it seems to be for other people, that is worth taking seriously rather than reading as a flaw in your character.
The fog after cannabis is not gone by morning. In younger users learning can stay dulled for several days, so Saturday night is still in the room on Wednesday.