In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist, wrote about the psychological impacts of life as a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II. His mother, father, brother, and pregnant wife were all killed in the camps. Dr. Frankl describes in chilling detail how his captors took from him virtually…
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Successful, sustained recovery requires two levels of change: awareness and action. Without awareness, the ability to take necessary action is limited. And yet, as essential as awareness is, by itself it is of limited value. During the early to mid-twentieth century, it was not uncommon to treat addiction exclusively with psychoanalysis or other forms of…
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Through mindfulness and its associated practice of meditation, people develop a greater capacity to face uncomfortable, painful thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations, learning simply to accept the pain, anxiety, anger, or sadness and let it pass, without obsessing on it or needing to change it. Research has demonstrated that the practice of mindfulness meditation leads…
DetailsAs twelve-step programs suggest, recovery happens “one day at a time.” This slogan is a reminder that no one needs to spend time worrying about not using for the rest of his or her life. The idea of “never using again” tends to be so big that for many people it can be overwhelming. Those…
DetailsIf translating awareness into action means learning the approaches and techniques that work, and then practicing them with persistence and dedication (and it does), consistency and repetition are key. Through daily repetition, multimodal recovery practice deepens the conscious and unconscious memory tracks that guide me further in the direction of health, healing, and wholeness. Neural…
DetailsThe brain plays a central role in both active addiction and recovery. Brain imaging studies as reported by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) demonstrate that physical changes take place in areas of the brains of drug addicted individuals that affect learning, decision making, judgment, memory, and behavior control. These brain changes can…
DetailsAs challenging as it can be to learn and develop new skills in any area, in comparison to recovery all the examples I’ve described are simple and concrete. Skills such as accepting things you really, really want to change, but can’t, and tolerating distressing emotions and physical sensations without acting on them in ways that…
DetailsBasketball is an excellent metaphor for recovery. On the court, as in real life, the environment and its circumstances evolve continuously. The action is constant, but energy and momentum can shift dramatically. Different players rotate in and out of the game, some playing more substantial roles than others. Each person’s playing time and the significance…
DetailsThe process of changing patterns of living requires conscious (a.k.a. mindful) and conscientious awareness, along with extraordinary patience and persistent practice. This applies to moving from a life in active addiction and chronic pain to one in recovery from both. It also ties in to one’s evolution from the need to be right to remaining…
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In child and human development there is a natural tendency to become like our most important role models, particularly our same sex primary parent figures. In other words, boys tend to take on characteristics of their father figures and girls those of their mother figures. The main processes through which this phenomenon takes place are…
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