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Areas › Low mood and hard feelings › When you use something to cope
It is the same machinery that lets somebody pick up a language or a trade, running in the part of the brain built for wanting rather than the part built for knowing. Which is why counting how often, and in what setting, tells you more about where this is heading than any judgement about character does. It also means the count can start moving the other way.
If you are using something to cope and it has become hard to stop, please speak to a doctor before changing anything.
inspired it to know its own rebellion and piety (Quran 91:8). The same soul is described as capable of both directions, which is the whole point about learning.
الشمس
فَأَلۡهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقۡوَىٰهَا
and inspired it [to know] its own rebellion and piety
Qur’an 91:8read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A review of how mindfulness based relapse prevention is thought to work argues that craving and low mood, and the wish to get away from both, are the main drivers of relapse. That describes a learned loop rather than a moral failure. It is a review setting out a model, so take it as a way of seeing the problem rather than proof of the mechanism.
Witkiewitz K, Lustyk MKB, Bowen S. (2013). Retraining the addicted brain: a review of hypothesized neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness-based relapse prevention.. Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Whatever you repeat becomes easier to repeat, good for you or not.
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.
If the language of a recovery group puts you off, that is a reason to look for a different group, not a reason to decide that help is not for you.
If cutting down has failed over and over, that is information rather than a verdict on you. For some people the workable goal turns out to be none rather than less.