when we act against our own knowledge

The first drink appeared at 10 PM.

I had been clean for months. Not just from alcohol - from everything. No drinking, no drugs, no random makeouts. I had clear reasons: I don't need to contaminate my soul and body with chemicals. I don't want to share my energy with random people. These weren't rules imposed on me - they were choices I'd made because they felt right.

But there I was, surrounded by people I love, music flowing, laughter echoing off the walls. And something in me just thought: "This is life."

Not dramatically. Not with internal debate. Just a quiet shift, like changing the radio station.

One drink became several. Sometime around midnight, I found myself making out with a guy I barely knew. By 3 AM, I was doing precisely what months-ago-me had decided wasn't for me anymore.

The weirdest part? None of it felt wrong.

The next morning

I woke up with that familiar confusion. Not shame, exactly. Not regret. Just... bewilderment.

How did someone who genuinely doesn't miss drinking end up drunk? How did someone who values protecting their energy end up giving it away to a stranger?

It's not like I'd been white-knuckling sobriety for months, desperately wanting these things. In my hermit mode - working out, walking, thinking, listening to music - I genuinely don't feel the need to go out or party or connect with random people. I'm content in that space.

But the moment I was in that environment, it was like a different person took over. Someone who operates on completely different logic.

The pattern

This isn't the first time. There was the night I took drugs after six months clean, just because someone offered and I thought "why not?" The afternoon I spent three hours scrolling social media after deleting all the apps, because my mom’s phone was right there. The week I ate sugar after feeling amazing without it, because someone brought cookies to work and they looked good.

Each time, the same thing: months of genuine contentment with my choices, followed by a moment where those choices just... evaporate. Like they belonged to someone else.

Each time, it doesn't feel like self-sabotage or rebellion. It feels natural. It feels like flowing with what's happening instead of fighting it.

The mystery

What is this part of me that can completely override decisions I've made about my own well-being?

It's not that I forget my values in these moments. I remember them. I just don't care about them. Or rather, something else feels more important: being present, going with the flow, not overthinking, being human.

When I made out with that guy, I wasn't thinking "I'm going to break my commitment to myself." I was thinking "this feels nice right now." When I took that first drink, I wasn't thinking "I'm contaminating my body." I was thinking "everyone's having fun, this is what people do."

In those moments, my carefully considered choices feel... unnecessary. Like I was taking life too seriously before.

What am I really wrestling with?

Maybe the real question isn't why this happens, but what it means that it doesn't feel wrong when it does.

Is it self-sabotage if it feels natural in the moment? Is it forgetting my values if both ways of being feel authentic to who I am?

When I'm protecting my energy and avoiding substances, that feels right. When I'm flowing with whatever's happening in the moment, that also feels right. Both states feel like me.

Maybe I'm not one consistent person with clear, unchanging values. Maybe I'm someone who responds differently to different environments, different energies, different moments.

The hermit version of me makes sense. The social, spontaneous version of me also makes sense. They just don't make sense together.

Living with not making sense

I don't have an answer for this. I don't even know if it needs an answer.

What if some contradictions don't need to be resolved? What if sometimes you act against your own knowledge not because something is wrong with you, but because being human means containing different ways of being that don't always communicate with each other?

I don't want to label this as self-sabotage - that feels too harsh, too disconnected from how natural it feels in the moment. But I also don't want to pretend it doesn't matter, that choices don't have consequences.

Maybe the work isn't figuring out which version of me is "real" or "right." Maybe the work is learning to live with the fact that I contain multiples that don't always make logical sense together.

Maybe some parts of being human require accepting that we don't always make sense, even to ourselves. And maybe that's not something to fix - maybe that's just something to witness, without trying to force it into a neat explanation.

Sometimes you act against your own knowledge because in that moment, something else feels more true than what you thought you knew about yourself. And maybe that's not a problem to solve - maybe that's just what it means to be human.