5 Daily Meditations to Try in Addiction Recovery LRI Blog

Consider the case of a man in partial remission from alcohol use disorder who has recently stopped drinking. After successfully abstaining from alcohol for over 2 months after realizing the negative impact his drinking had on his family and work, he attends a party with old friends, where he is overcome by craving and has a drinking lapse. He could interpret this https://ecosoberhouse.com/ lapse as the beginning of a downward spiral into his alcohol use habits, with attendant feelings of shame and hopelessness. Alternatively, he could use mindfulness to disengage from this negative emotional state, arrest the automatic impulse and concomitant experience of craving, and then re-commit himself to recovery by contacting his 12-Step fellowship sponsor.

People struggling with addiction typically use drugs or alcohol to cope with stressful situations and mental hardship. Finally, it is unknown whether mindfulness might best ameliorate addiction through participation in time-limited interventions or if mindfulness should be used daily as part of a wellness lifestyle. With regard to the latter, shifting from an addiction-oriented lifestyle to adoption of a wellness lifestyle is conceptualized as integral to the recovery model [87]. In this vein, studies should examine mindfulness not only as a technique in circumscribed interventions to prevent addiction relapse but also examine mindfulness as a long-term, sustainable health behavior that promotes addiction recovery. Pursuit of a healthy lifestyle is not something that is finalized over the course of an 8-week intervention; to the contrary, maintenance of physical health requires ongoing, regular exercise and nutritious dietary choices on a daily basis that do not exceed the caloric needs of the individual.

Water Meditation

Pre-pandemic studies indicated that more than 85% of individuals relapse and return to drug use within one year of treatment. With the convergence of a pandemic and an addiction epidemic, those attempting to recover from substance use disorders (SUDS) are more vulnerable to relapse than ever before. According to the Addiction Policy Reform (APF) Survey, 1 in 3 report changes in treatment or recovery support services due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The information we provide is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It should not be used in place of the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers. For instance, MBI non-responders might need a supplementary course of motivational enhancement therapy, computerized cognitive remediation, or booster sessions (see “The Need for Dose/Response Research” below) to enhance outcomes. The MOST research process could allow for resource-intensive meditation for addiction recovery and complex MBIs to be pared down to their most efficacious elements to maximize efficacy and efficiency by eliminating techniques that do not confer therapeutic benefits and augmenting those that do. With regard to implementation science, many studies to date have measured the effectiveness of brief MBIs due to their relative ease of dissemination. Yet, to be optimally efficacious, future intervention development research might consider evolving MBIs beyond a time-limited intervention approach.

How do you meditate for addiction?

Aside from using some major types of mindfulness exercises for addiction recovery with the goal of achieving specific emotional and physical results, there are other important tips and tricks involved with meditation in addiction recovery. A meditation exercise can only achieve the proper results if the person meditating learns to do it properly, and there are plenty of nuances that might surprise you if it’s a therapy style you’re only just learning to use. Results indicated that studies with samples of only men experienced larger reductions in levels of craving and stress, and significantly larger increases in levels of mindfulness, compared to studies with samples comprised only of women or studies with samples comprised of women and men.

• At Lighthouse Recovery Institute, our aftercare recovery programs offer a sense of structure, fellowship, and community that can give you the support you need in early recovery.
• Consistent with the reward restructuring hypothesis, by practicing mindful savoring over time, the experience of natural reward may outweigh the drive to use drugs to obtain a sense of well-being – fortifying the individual against relapse.
• It’s well-documented that judgment of emotions intensifies emotions.
• It aims to cultivate awareness of cues and triggers so that one doesn’t instinctively turn to using drugs.
• If you know what works for you and use it to achieve results such as relaxation, self-love, and better focus, you’re more likely to stay in recovery for longer periods of time and avoid situations that’ll lead to a relapse.