I can’t keep doing this.
Anyone who has dealt with addiction probably knows this feeling. I certainly do.
I used to wake up after a long day of drinking and not remember what happened the night before. I felt terrible. I could remember bits and pieces of arguing with someone and spending money I didn’t have. I knew it was hurting me, and I meant it when I said “I am done.” This is the last time.
It never lasted though. As the day went on, I felt more stressed and told myself I just wouldn’t drink as much this time, and then I would stop. I believed this.
I’ve always found this one of the strangest parts of addiction: how completely you can believe two opposing things, sometimes within hours of each other.
I cannot keep living this way.
I will do it one more time.
It doesn’t make much sense, even when you’re the person doing it.
Psychology has a name for some of the discomfort behind this contradiction: cognitive dissonance.
When what you know and what you do don’t match
Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling we get when our actions don’t match our beliefs.
We generally like to believe our actions make sense.
If I consider myself an honest person, I want to behave honestly. If my family matters deeply to me, I want my choices to reflect that. If I believe something is damaging my health, it would seem logical to stop doing it.
When our behaviour doesn’t match those beliefs, we feel a need to fix it. Changing the behaviour is one solution, but isn’t the only one.
We can also change the way we think about what we’re doing. Think about some of these statements:
I don’t drink as much as other people.
Everyone needs something to help them relax.
I had a terrible week.
I can stop when I really need to.
This isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be.
I’ll deal with it later.
These explanations can ease some of the discomfort between what we know and what we’re doing. We can keep going because we’ve found a way to justify it to ourselves.
Most of us do this in one form or another because cognitive dissonance isn’t unique to addiction. Human beings are remarkably talented at explaining ourselves to ourselves.
Addiction, however, raises the stakes.
Knowing better doesn’t always mean doing better
One of the most frustrating questions people ask themselves during addiction is: Why am I doing this when I know exactly where it leads?
I understand that question.
It is bewildering to watch yourself repeat something you have already learned the hard way. Knowing that something is harmful and being able to stop doing it are not the same thing.
Research into addiction and cognition helps explain why. When you want a drink or a drug, you aren’t necessarily sitting there calmly weighing the pros and cons. Cravings, habits, certain places or people, and even the expectation of how the substance will make you feel can start influencing the decision.
After some time, substances can also become closely intertwined with certain people, places, emotions, or routines. Sometimes the urge is already there before you’ve even consciously decided you’re going to use.
This helps explain why a person can genuinely want recovery and still experience a powerful urge to use. It also explains why simply reminding someone of the consequences usually isn’t enough.
They know.
People who struggle with addiction can understand their own patterns. They know which drink tends to lead to another. They know which people they shouldn’t call, and they know how tomorrow morning is likely to feel.
Insight matters, but insight alone does not necessarily change behaviour.
The stories we tell ourselves
Cognitive dissonance becomes especially interesting in addiction because we are not only trying to explain our substance use. We are often trying to protect the way we see ourselves.
Imagine that I believe I am a dependable mother, partner, friend, or employee. Then my drinking begins interfering with those roles.
Now I have to hold two uncomfortable pieces of information at once: I am a dependable person and my behaviour is becoming increasingly unreliable.
Something has to give.
I could acknowledge that alcohol has become a serious problem. However, that will require changes I’m scared to make. It may feel easier, (at least temporarily), to adjust my explanation.
I wasn’t really drunk.
They are overreacting.
I would have remembered eventually.
Anyone would drink if they were under as much stress as I am.
At least I’m still going to work.
That last one can be especially convincing. We compare ourselves to whatever version of addiction allows us to feel relatively okay.
I’ve never had a DUI.
I don’t drink in the morning.
I still have my job.
I’m not as bad as that person.
And perhaps all of those things are true. They still don’t answer the more important question: Is this hurting me?
What am I getting from this?
This is where I think the conversation needs to move beyond Why can’t I just stop?
A better question may be: What is this doing for me?
People don’t repeatedly return to substances because substances offer nothing. They offer a lot, in fact. Alcohol may calm anxiety for a few hours. Drugs may provide relief from pain. Substance use may make you feel confident, numb traumatic memories, make social situations easier, or just make you feel like you can manage life.
None of that means the substance is actually solving the problem, though. It means it is doing something.
If we don’t understand what that something is, we may spend a lot of time trying to remove the substance without addressing the reason it became so important.
This is one reason addiction treatment goes deeper than simply helping someone stop drinking or using drugs. There may be trauma underneath the substance use that has been there for years. There may also be depression, grief, anxiety, or unhealthy relationship patterns that haven’t been dealt with.
Sometimes a person has spent so long using substances to change how they feel that they no longer know what to do with an uncomfortable emotion when it arrives.
Removing the substance leaves that question waiting.
When shame joins the cycle
Cognitive dissonance can become even more painful when substance use conflicts with the person we believe we should be.
We drink after promising we wouldn’t. We lie to someone we love. We hide something. We wake up ashamed.
Then the question changes from Why did I do that? to What kind of person does that? Shame rarely makes people especially curious about their own behaviour. Instead, it makes us want to get away from ourselves.
And if alcohol or drugs have been one of the ways we learned to escape uncomfortable feelings, shame can push us directly towards the thing that created the shame in the first place.
That cycle can continue for a long time, until it is recognized and stopped.
Recovery requires honesty about what happened and the ways our behaviour affected other people. But there is a difference between saying I did something I need to change and deciding this is simply who I am.
The first leaves somewhere to go.
Learning to notice the contradiction
One of the useful things about understanding cognitive dissonance is that you begin to recognise it while it is happening.
You hear yourself saying, I’ll only have two tonight.
Instead of immediately accepting the thought, you can become curious about it. Have I made this bargain before? What happened last time? Why does stopping tomorrow suddenly seem more appealing than stopping today? What changed between this morning, when I was certain I wanted to quit, and right now?
These questions are ways to slow down a process that may have become automatic.
Treatment approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy can be helpful. CBT helps people understand high-risk situations and recognise thoughts that make substance use more likely. Motivational approaches can also help people examine ambivalence without assuming they must already feel completely certain about changing.
People often arrive in treatment with mixed feelings. You can desperately want your life to change and still miss what alcohol and drugs did for you.
You can know cocaine is destroying things you care about and still want cocaine. You can want recovery and be terrified of living without the substance that has helped you cope.
Turning insight into change
Understanding why you keep returning to something that hurts you can bring relief because there is an explanation for some of the contradictions.
But understanding cognitive dissonance isn’t a clever way to think yourself out of addiction.
I could become an expert on every psychological mechanism involved and still need help changing my behaviour.
Insight has to become action.
What does this look like?
That might mean telling someone the truth about how much you are using. It might mean going to treatment, returning after a relapse, addressing trauma or mental health issues, changing relationships, or learning entirely new ways to cope with emotions you have spent years hiding from.
What does progress look like?
Maybe you notice the old explanation and don’t believe it right away. Or I’ll stop tomorrow shows up again, and this time you recognise that you’ve heard this one before.
There’s that uncomfortable space between wanting something and choosing not to have it, and when you choose to sit with it instead of immediately reacting, that’s progress.
Eventually, the question: Why do I keep doing this? can become something more useful.
What would I have to do differently this time?
At Camino Recovery, we understand that addiction is rarely about the substance itself. Our personalised treatment programmes explore the emotional, psychological, and behavioural patterns that can keep people returning to alcohol or drugs even when they desperately want something different.
If you recognise yourself in this cycle, you do not have to understand your way out of it alone.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help. We are here for you.
References:
- Cherry, K. (2026, August 18). What is cognitive dissonance? Verywell Mind.
- Stacy, A. W., & Wiers, R. W. (2010). Implicit cognition and addiction: a tool for explaining paradoxical behavior. Annual review of clinical psychology, 6, 551–575. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.121208.131444
- McHugh, R. K., Hearon, B. A., & Otto, M. W. (2010). Cognitive behavioral therapy for substance use disorders. The Psychiatric clinics of North America, 33(3), 511–525. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2010.04.012
