3 Reasons Why Meditation Can Help with Addiction Meditation Therapy

It is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your health care provider(s). We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with your health care provider. The mention of any product, service, or therapy is not an endorsement by NCCIH. If you are drifting through life, feel like you have lost control, or don’t know how you got to where you are, then choosing to live consciously can change everything.

The best way to determine how much and how often you want to meditate is by checking in with yourself. In those cases, you might keep your practice short and gradually increase the time and frequency as you get used to it. Beyond the positive effects of meditation when it comes to addiction, the main question this article is contending with is whether or not we can be addicted to meditation. Maybe you meditate for long periods of time, feeling bad when you don’t meditate, you might be wondering if you’re addicted to it. Addictions don’t appear out of nowhere and often manifest as a coping mechanism, or a way to feel better, numbing pain or relieving stress. Peer pressure or feelings of euphoria may also contribute to the development of addictions.

#6 — Most Addictions Stem From Stress. Meditation Makes You Immune To Stress

There are many mindfulness guides, apps, and other tools that can help you get started if you are interested in trying it, but you can also talk to a therapist about mindfulness-based treatment options. Because mindfulness can help improve mood and combat stress, it may also be helpful for people who are dealing with chronic illness. The Forge Treatment Center makes use of a wide variety of treatment modalities to treat drug and alcohol addiction, including meditation. Meditation is great to engage in as it helps you enhance your awareness of self-acceptance and compassion, both of which are fantastic resources to help you maintain abstinence.

• Sessions often involve experiential exercises to reinforce the mindfulness principles that had been introduced didactically.
• Because mindfulness can help improve mood and combat stress, it may also be helpful for people who are dealing with chronic illness.
• No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
• Through meditation, the qualities you will develop may also increase your ability to cope with harmful emotional and environmental triggers.
• If you’re aggressive, you can find ways to temper that aspect of yourself, becoming assertive and clear about your boundaries without entering into a competitive and possibly even hostile mind-set that will sabotage you.
• The NCCIH Clearinghouse provides information on NCCIH and complementary and integrative health approaches, including publications and searches of Federal databases of scientific and medical literature.

No content on this site, regardless of date, should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. Fostering a nonjudgmental, compassionate approach toward yourself is essential to maintain sobriety. Foster a nonjudgmental, compassionate approach toward ourselves and our experiences. While we have outlined one basic philosophy / form of meditation in the links below, if you already have a proven meditation technique — then we encourage you to combine & enhance it with our audio technology. EquiSync uses sound to deepen the meditative state no matter your chosen technique. Many addicts come into recovery with a history of relationships that they have damaged or that have damaged them.

Improved Mental Health

In a 2012 U.S. survey, 1.9 percent of 34,525 adults reported that they had practiced mindfulness meditation in the past 12 months. Among those responders who practiced mindfulness meditation exclusively, 73 percent reported that they meditated for their general wellness and to prevent diseases, and most of them (approximately 92 percent) reported that they meditated addiction meditation to relax or reduce stress. In more than half of the responses, a desire for better sleep was a reason for practicing mindfulness meditation. Meditation and mindfulness practices usually are considered to have few risks. However, few studies have examined these practices for potentially harmful effects, so it isn’t possible to make definite statements about safety.

The Clearinghouse does not provide medical advice, treatment recommendations, or referrals to practitioners. Mindfulness meditation practices may help reduce insomnia and improve sleep quality. Meditation can also help you deal with protracted withdrawal, which involves symptoms like anxiety, difficulty making decisions and strong drug cravings that last for several months after drug use is stopped. SAMHSA recommends that people find ways to exercise their minds and bodies to prevent themselves from relapsing during the protracted withdrawal phase. In focused meditation, participants choose one of the five senses as the center point of meditation. For example, you may focus on the sound of a bell or the sight of a fire burning in the fireplace.

Reduced Risk of Relapse

The challenge to altering addictions is the fear that you can’t change which can push you into denial and cause you to minimize the consequences of your unproductive behaviors. Whatever you discover about yourself and however painful your discovery, dramatic breakthroughs are always possible. Research on mindfulness meditation indicates that qualities we once thought immutable that form temperament and character can actually be altered significantly. By retraining your mind through mindfulness practice, you create new neural networks.

A 2020 review examined 83 studies (a total of 6,703 participants) and found that 55 of those studies reported negative experiences related to meditation practices. The researchers concluded that about 8 percent of participants had a negative effect from practicing meditation, which is similar to the percentage reported for psychological therapies. In an analysis limited to 3 studies (521 participants) of mindfulness-based stress reduction programs, investigators found that the mindfulness practices were not more harmful than receiving no treatment. Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention, or MBRP, was created in 2010 at the Addictive Behaviors Research Center at the University of Washington.

Over time, high blood pressure makes the heart work harder to pump blood, which can lead to poor heart function. Becoming skilled in meditation may help you control or redirect the racing or runaway thoughts that often lead to insomnia. Improvements in attention and clarity of thinking may help keep your mind young.