Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you use something to cope
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.
Borrowed stimulants get treated as harmless because a doctor's name is on the box somewhere. The dose was worked out for another person's body and another person's condition, and nobody is watching what it does to yours. If the reason for taking it is that you cannot concentrate or cannot cope, that reason deserves a proper assessment, which is a far better deal than a friend's supply.
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
eat what is good and lawful from the earth (Quran 2:168). What goes into you is worth being particular about, including where it came from.
يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ كُلُواْ مِمَّا فِي ٱلۡأَرۡضِ حَلَٰلࣰ ا طَيِّبࣰ ا وَلَا تَتَّبِعُواْ خُطُوَٰتِ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمۡ عَدُوࣱّ مُّبِينٌ
People, eat what is good and lawful from the earth, and do not follow Satan’s footsteps, for he is your sworn enemy
Qur’an 2:168read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of the overlap between post-traumatic stress and substance use weighs the idea that people use in order to medicate symptoms against alternatives such as a shared vulnerability behind both. Either way, use that has a reason underneath it points to something worth assessing properly. The review lays out the competing explanations rather than settling between them.
Kathleen T. Brady; Sudie E. Back; Scott F. Coffey (2004). Substance Abuse and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Current Directions in Psychological Science doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A medicine is only safe in the person, the dose and the situation it was worked out for.
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
When someone tells you how much they use, take it as a floor rather than a total. Then keep that adjustment to yourself.
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.
Draw your own chart of the moment you usually give in, with the questions you actually ask yourself, and put it where you will see it.