Alcohol Recovery: Recovering from Alcoholism

In those cases, you might keep your practice short and gradually increase the time and frequency as you get used to it. Meditation is becoming more available as a holistic treatment for substance abuse. Individuals seeking a life of transformation can begin so by contacting a treatment provider who can place them in a facility offering yoga and meditation. Prospective patients can discover the different types of treatments that can help them thrive in wellness. Contact a treatment provider today to learn how meditation treatment and medications can set you free from addiction. Many stressors we encounter in life are from the external environment.

  • Nineteen adult alcohol-dependent graduates of an intensive outpatient program were enrolled.
  • You, above everyone else, have the answers as to whether or not meditation is good for you.

The downside is that mindfulness-based treatments usually involve many hours of training over several sessions and aren’t readily available to everyone who might benefit from them. Researchers at University College London wanted to see how a very brief intervention—just one informal session lasting a few minutes—might benefit people at risk for problems with alcohol. When you’re craving alcohol, there’s a tendency to remember the positive effects of drinking and forget the negatives.

Four Truths of Refuge Recovery

The important thing is to find whatever works for you—your special connection to that quiet place where you can become mindful, listen to your heart and renew your spirit again and again. Addiction limited our ability to connect with others in any meaningful way. Compassion strengthens our ability to build healthy, healing relationships that positively affect our inner emotions. Most of us give little attention to the thoughts that fill our head. They’re just sort of there, like background noise we’ve learned to tune out.

Evidence supporting the efficacy of MBIs as an intervention for SUDs and for relapse prevention is growing. A recent systematic review from Sancho et al16 included 54 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) targeting either substance or behavioral addictions. 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, addiction meditation future intervention development research might consider evolving MBIs beyond a time-limited intervention approach. Despite growing pressure for expediency and increasingly brief intervention, SUDs are chronic conditions that may require prolonged interventions to produce durable change. In that regard, mindfulness might be conceptualized as an integral component of a wellness-oriented lifestyle – a catalyst for long-term recovery.

The three basic steps of urge surfing:

Dr Aleksandra Zgierska coordinated the study, and she says the practice of mindfulness as a means of staving off cravings is nothing new – it’s just that most of the evidence of its effectiveness was anecdotal until recently. Now, backed by clinical research, meditation as an alcohol rehabilitation tool is garnering mainstream attention. Since this sort of thinking circumvents any talk of faith or otherworldly intervention, it gives scientists a chance to have an empirical look at the benefits that meditation can play in addiction recovery.