Addiction is often tied to uncomfortable feelings and memories, so facing them through meditation can be difficult. Mindfulness and meditation in recovery offer a deeper understanding of yourself and help regulate emotions. They can also have a significant effect on your mind throughout recovery, as they both teach you to be deliberate and pay attention to what triggers your cravings. Dr. Small’s professional experience encompasses General Psychiatry, Addiction Psychiatry and Family Medicine. As the founder of Headlands Addiction Treatment Services, Dr. Small and his team have become leaders in the delivery of addiction Alcohol Use Disorder medicine and psychiatry to treatment programs throughout California and beyond.
The Four Primary Goals of MBRP
In the past decade, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been studied as a treatment for an array addictive behaviors, including drinking, smoking, opioid misuse, and use of illicit substances like cocaine https://ecosoberhouse.com/ and heroin. This article reviews current research evaluating MBIs as a treatment for addiction, with a focus on findings pertaining to clinical outcomes and biobehavioral mechanisms. Studies indicate that MBIs reduce substance misuse and craving by modulating cognitive, affective, and psychophysiological processes integral to self-regulation and reward processing. This integrative review provides the basis for manifold recommendations regarding the next wave of research needed to firmly establish the efficacy of MBIs and elucidate the mechanistic pathways by which these therapies ameliorate addiction.
Focus On Your Breath
Fortunately, there are now several scientifically-based mind-body medicine options for people in recovery. Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) is a technique that uses meditation as well as cognitive approaches to prevent relapse. It aims to cultivate awareness of cues and triggers so meditation for addiction recovery that one doesn’t instinctively turn to using drugs. It also helps people get comfortable sitting with unpleasant emotions and thoughts —their distress tolerance, a person’s ability to tolerate emotional discomfort — without automatically escaping by taking a drug. Improving distress tolerance is a common theme to many, if not all, approaches to addiction recovery, as a large part of the appeal of drug use is replacing a bad emotion with a good emotion — for example, by using a drug.
- For instance, do MBIs decrease addictive behavior by strengthening inhibitory control via activation of top-down neural circuitry?
- Ultimately, addiction and the unpleasant feelings that accompany it is a result of not living consciously.
- This is indeed a challenge, as MBIs with demonstrated efficacy in Stage II trials may fail to show effectiveness in Stage III and IV trials when delivered by community clinicians.
- Fostering a nonjudgmental, compassionate approach toward yourself is essential to maintain sobriety.
- Focusing on the breath can restore a sense of calm and control that keeps our recovery on track.
Improved Focus and Concentration
These findings supporting of the restructuring reward hypothesis were paralleled by preliminary functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence of the effects of MORE on nicotine dependent smokers. In a pilot study of MORE as a smoking cessation intervention 34, smokers viewed cigarette images during a cue-reactivity task, and then in a separate positive emotion regulation task, either viewed or savored images representing natural rewards. Furthermore, resting state functional connectivity between rACC and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) significantly increased in the MORE group relative to the comparison group. To be clear, MORE provides integrated training in mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring skills, and therefore other MBIs may or may not exert similar effects on restructuring the relative salience of natural and drug-related reward. However, other potential mechanisms of mindfulness as a treatment for addiction have been identified in the literature and are discussed below.
- This type of meditation helps you to explore your inner feelings, thoughts, and reactions.
- This could be a specific time of day or after a daily occurrence, such as after dinner or before bed.
- Unveiling the mortality rate of alcoholism and its impact on health.
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Many people struggling with substance abuse also live with conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or PTSD. While meditation can help improve symptoms, it may interact with any medications you’re on or trigger difficult emotions. They can help determine what types of meditation are right for you and if any adjustments to your treatment plan are needed.
Awareness of and attention to the present moment by detaching from thoughts of the past and future and allowing you to reconnect with your body and the world around you. Artwork appearing to depict meditation goes back many thousands of years further than that. Seemingly originating in South and East Asia at around the same time, meditation’s earliest practitioners were followers of the Vedic and early Hindu schools as well as the Taoist monks of China. In spiritual meditation, the focus is on using silence to find your connection with God or the universe. People often use essential oils, such as sage and frankincense, to heighten the experience.
