This is a trait of mine that I was finally able to find a way to gather my thoughts on and articulate them this past week, and I'm wondering if any of you have any experience with this and if it's another characteristic of mine that I have BPD to thank for.

Does anyone else find themselves needing to learn the same lessons over again?

So, I have a lot of compulsions. I basically consider myself to have less of a persona and more of a collection of compulsions. I spend compulsively, I eat compulsively, I smoke weed compulsively, etc etc etc.  I just realized that I learn lessons about my actions and I make determination about future behavior that I always seem to forget within a week.

Take smoking weed for example. I do not like it. Every time I do it, I have a panic attack. I can't stop thinking about death, death and more death , and my heart starts feeling VERY strange in my chest. It starts aching and feels physically heavier. Every time I do it, I regret it immediately, I think to myself "I HATE this, this feels horrifying, I wish I wasn't high right now, I will NEVER do this to myself again." And the next day, I'm all about that, I will never smoke weed again. And the next day, I'm a little less about that. And the next day, I've even less about that. Until the next weekend rolls around, and I have completely forgotten the lesson I learned about how horrible smoking weed feels, like it never even happened. And I find myself thinking "ooh, I should get high! That will be fun!"

Another example. I've been microdosing magic mushrooms for the last few months and it's been an interesting experience. When you microdose, you're supposed to take only a MINUTE dose of magic mushrooms.  The general rule is, if you can feel ANY psychoactive effect AT ALL, you've taken too much. Because I have a predilection towards feeling chemically altered, sometimes I think to myself "you know what? I'm going to take a little more today, get a little bit of a buzz going. That might be fun!" This brilliant idea strikes me every few weeks and I take a little more than usual, and it feels AWFUL. I don't feel like doing anything besides lying on my bed, my thinking is all messed up, and activities like listening to podcasts or painting, my favourite things to do, the things I dream about and anticipate doing all through the work week, are no longer enjoyable AT ALL. And I say to myself "I will never do this again." Then the same thing happens as it does with the weed. Slowly I forget the important lesson I learned, until a few weeks go by and I think to myself "you know what? I'm going to take a little more today. That might be fun!"

This happens with just about everything. Food, spending money, relationships, any and all social interactions, absolutely any area in my journey where life experience can be gained and applied to improve my situation.  Any time I make a determination based on past events about how I'm going to conduct myself in the future, it always just slowly evaporates from my catalog of awareness.

It's not that I want to do the thing I know I shouldn't do so bad that I can't control myself (though I can't, I have no self control what so ever, but that's another story), It's that I can't REMEMBER the lesson I learned previously. No matter how GODDAMN MISERABLE smoking weed makes me feel every time I do it, a week later  I find myself thinking "Yay! It's friday! Time to smoke!" It just dissipates from my mind and I forget I ever learned it. Does that happen with anyone else?