Meditation and addiction

A worthy subject for exploration

This is advice I found useful (and continue to find useful!)  The approach is based in Buddhism, but it isn't religious.  Think of it as tools for managing the self, or mind hacks**

Original web site:

"People caught up in addictions know only two basic approaches to craving and they exhaust themselves trying endless variations of each: (1) push the craving away, attempt to annihilate it; or, conversely, (2) find some way to gratify the craving while still managing to get along in the world.   Insight meditation offers a third approach, but it is one that may at first seem about as remote and lacking in understanding as the advice to "just use willpower."   

A meditation teacher asks the student to just sit, calm the mind, and observe closely what is going on.  It is a lot to expect an addict in the beginning stages of recovery to believe that "just sitting" will lead to anything but an intensification of craving, to endless thoughts about gratification. "

" "During meditation it is very important to learn to see thoughts and feelings and physical sensations as clearly as possible in and of themselves, just as they are immediately experienced.  Early Pali* texts on meditation emphasize this again and again: "considering the body as body, mind as mind, feeling as feeling." [1]   Prior to learning something about how to meditate, I would get so caught up in strategies and feelings about how to get rid of the desire for a cigarette or a drink that I was distracted from experiencing the desire for just what it was as a physical sensation.  Once I could be clear about the body sensation in and of itself, I found it was not nearly as intolerable as I had thought. KISS is an acronym often heard in 12-step circles: Keep It Simple Stupid." "

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*Pali is the language used by early writers on Buddhism.

**Neuroscience and psychology tricks to find out what's going on inside your brain:

http://www.mindhacks.com/

Comments

[Meditation Techniques]

I realize this is an old post but I thought I'd still drop a comment. Meditation can help in these situations but sometimes the addict needs to get the physical craving under control with a doctor's care first. That being said, it can't hurt to try meditation if you don't have access to health care or don't want to wait.