Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you use something to cope
Sometimes the drinking or the smoking is not the first problem at all. It is somebody's own treatment for an attention difficulty or an anxiety nobody has looked at yet.
You can usually tell from what it is used for: to speak in a group, to sit still long enough to work, to sleep. Where that is the shape of it, work aimed only at the substance tends to fall over, because removing the treatment while leaving the condition is not much of an offer. Get the underlying thing assessed and treated and the use often loosens on its own.
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
God does not change the condition of a people unless they change what is in themselves (Quran 13:11). The change is located inside, which is exactly where the untreated thing is sitting.
لَهُۥ مُعَقِّبَٰتࣱ مِّنۢ بَيۡنِ يَدَيۡهِ وَمِنۡ خَلۡفِهِۦ يَحۡفَظُونَهُۥ مِنۡ أَمۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوۡمٍ حَتَّىٰ يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنفُسِهِمۡۗ وَإِذَآ أَرَادَ ٱللَّهُ بِقَوۡمࣲ سُوٓءࣰ ا فَلَا مَرَدَّ لَهُۥۚ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ مِن وَالٍ
each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God’s command. God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves, but if He wills harm on a people, no one can ward it off–– apart from Him, they have no protector
Qur’an 13:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Across students in three countries, rumination helped explain why depressive symptoms lead to drinking as a way of coping, which in turn predicted alcohol related harm. That places the drinking inside a chain beginning well before the first glass. The design is cross-sectional, so the chain is plausible rather than demonstrated, and it still argues for treating what sits upstream.
Bravo AJ, Pilatti A, Pearson MR, Mezquita L, Ibáñez MI, Ortet G. (2018). Depressive symptoms, ruminative thinking, drinking motives, and alcohol outcomes: A multiple mediation model among college students in three countries.. Addictive behaviors doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Take away someone's solution without touching what it solved and they will go looking for another one.
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
Set small rewards for staying off it and let them grow the longer you go, so the next one is always near and a slip costs something you can feel.
Repetition is what makes anything stick, and it does not check whether the thing is good for you. That is most of what addiction is.
With vaping the pull is often not the hit at all. It is knowing the thing is there in your pocket if you need it.