Mindfulness and Addiction Recovery

Talk Recovery Radio

Talk Recovery Radio airs every Thursday on 100.5 fm in Vancouver from 12 pm to 1 pm, hundreds of shows over 6 years. Bringing addiction recovery issues to the airways. Powered by Last Door Recovery Society

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Finding addiction recovery with mindfulness support

Dr. Lawrence Peltz who has worked as an addiction psychiatrist for more than two decades, he is also the author of “The Mindful Path to Addiction and Recovery”. A practical guide to regaining control over your life.

Mindfulness is what I call the four pillars of treatment. It’s like a foundation. It’s a beautiful component or adjunct, it helps inform all the other parts. For example, you know mindfulness is one of the sayings that’s most known in AA “one day at a time” mindfulness is really the microscopic version of that one moment of time. The idea of the Serenity Prayer, knowing the difference between what we can and can’t control. Mindfulness is very much about respect. The quality of mindfulness is a quality of the mind with which many factors arise simultaneously including equanimity, loving kindness, compassion and balance of mind.

One of the very key differences here is a distinction between pain and suffering. So if you if you can learn to be with pain then you have a chance because the reason people relapse then suffer is because they can’t take the pain. Once they develop the ability to handle pain then they can get well. And I think that speaks to a mindset that sometimes people assume or want to believe that getting sober or coming into recovery the pain will be a lessened. Lessening of pain or an absence of pain is really what we want. I don’t feel this pain anymore. But then we realize when we sober up it’s almost like the pain is like a little bit harder a little bit purer, a little bit stronger and then drugs become a solution again.

I believe recovery has four components of treatment recovery, psychotherapy, medicine and mindfulness and all are good for pain. They work together very nicely to help people hold pain, for example you’re in a pissy mood, you go into an AA meeting or wherever, you feel a bit better because you’re not alone right now. So that’s how recovery helps people with mindfulness it brings awareness to the now.

Mindfulness Addiction Recovery Book

This is really what the book’s about, it is a clinical book. The first section is about my addiction, the second section of the component, the third is about the challenges in recovery and the fourth is about compassion and a few other concluding thoughts from a few other people. BI dedicated to a few family members and patients because they taught me everything.

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