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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Systems for daily life
Work out what the appeal actually is. Speed, height, cold water, a crowd, the edge of fear. Then find the form of it that has brakes: a climbing wall with ropes, sea swimming with a club, a track day, an actual roller coaster. The aim is not to become a sensible person. It is to have the need already met, so it is not being met at midnight by a decision you would never make in daylight.
Eat and drink but do not be extravagant (Quran 7:31). The appetite itself is not the trouble; the shape you give it is.
الأعراف
۞يَٰبَنِيٓ ءَادَمَ خُذُواْ زِينَتَكُمۡ عِندَ كُلِّ مَسۡجِدࣲ وَكُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ وَلَا تُسۡرِفُوٓاْۚ إِنَّهُۥ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُسۡرِفِينَ
Children of Adam, dress well whenever you are at worship, and eat and drink [as We have permitted] but do not be extravagant: God does not like extravagant people
Qur’an 7:31read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The nearest evidence here is a randomised trial in 119 people who had both ADHD and a substance use disorder, comparing CBT that tackled both together with CBT for the substance use alone, in a group where the usual ADHD medicines are not a good option. It shows that the overlap is taken seriously enough to be treated as one problem. It does not test whether swapping one source of intensity for a safer one works, so hold this as reasonable harm reduction rather than as something proven.
van Emmerik-van Oortmerssen K, Vedel E, Kramer FJ, Blankers M, Dekker JJM, van den Brink W, Schoevers RA. (2019). Integrated cognitive behavioral therapy for ADHD in adult substance use disorder patients: Results of a randomized clinical trial.. Drug and alcohol dependence doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The wanting does not vanish when you refuse it, so it is safer to have somewhere planned for it to go.
If the risk taking already runs through drink, drugs, driving or money you cannot afford to lose, this is past self management and worth taking to a professional.
Writing things down is not evidence that your memory has failed. It is what happens once there is more in your life than one head can hold.
A healthy list loses items as well as gaining them. Some leave because they are done and some because they did not survive the week. Both are normal.
Sort the work into hardest, middling and easiest, then choose the order on purpose. Easy first for momentum or hard first while you are sharp, both are fine. What is not fine is letting the most interesting thing win by default.