Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you use something to cope
If a young person is using regularly, waiting to see whether they grow out of it is a gamble. Help early is nearly always cheaper than help later.
Families often hold off because raising it feels like an accusation. You can raise it without one: say what you have noticed, say you are not going anywhere, and ask what it is doing for them. The only job of the first conversation is to make a second one possible.
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
do not contribute to your destruction with your own hands, but do good (Quran 2:195). Waiting is one of the quieter ways of contributing, and moving early is the good on offer here.
وَأَنفِقُواْ فِي سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا تُلۡقُواْ بِأَيۡدِيكُمۡ إِلَى ٱلتَّهۡلُكَةِ وَأَحۡسِنُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ
Spend in God’s cause: do not contribute to your destruction with your own hands, but do good, for God loves those who do good
Qur’an 2:195read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of two decades of work on stress and substance use describes how prolonged stress alters the body's stress response in ways that raise craving, relapse risk and the chance of a poorer result from treatment. Time spent under strain is not neutral, then. It is a narrative review rather than a single test, and it argues for stepping in while things are still moveable.
Sinha R. (2024). Stress and substance use disorders: risk, relapse, and treatment outcomes.. The Journal of clinical investigation doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
The longer a pattern runs, the more of a life gets built around it, and the more there is to undo.
When not to
If there are signs of dependence, of using alone, or of harm to themselves, that needs professional help rather than a family conversation on its own.
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
What you tried at that age is a poor guide to what is in front of your child now. Cannabis today is far stronger than the same word used to mean.
A tablet is not safer because of where it started out. Taken by someone it was never prescribed for, it is simply an unprescribed drug.
If telling your doctor or midwife what you are using feels impossible, you can ask someone you already trust to pass it on for you, with your permission and in your words.