Mindfulness for addiction

Addiction retreats

Addiction is an issue that is close to our hearts. Most of The Now Project team have an intimate understanding of the darkest corners of addiction. We’ve been there so have real-world experience and more importantly we’ve pulled ourselves out of the hole. We know how it’s done.

This isn’t a “hanging on by your fingernails one day at a time kind of recovery, but real recovery. You see, through mindfulness and meditation, we’ve found what we were looking for all along. We don’t need our addictions, they never really worked anyway!

You’ll need to be sober and already on your recovery journey and we aren’t pretending this is a quick fix. It’s not and there is work for you to do. Some of it painful some of it joyful but all of it liberating. Our mindfulness and meditation retreats will give you a really good kick start and the tools to practice and grow in your daily life, and once you get into this you’ll find it quite addictive!

Mindful approach to addiction

Two things drive addiction – Firstly it’s a way of avoiding emotional or physical discomfort – who wouldn’t want to do that?

It’s normal to want to avoid pain, but when we look outside of ourselves toward a substance or a behaviour to get that relief, then we will always be prone to addictive traps.

Let me show you how it works. Let’s take alcohol for an example, when you drink it shuts down your consciousness and becomes a barrier between you and your feelings (all of your feelings not just the painful ones, but we’ll come to that). It deadens the anxiety loneliness heart ache or old trauma and gives us relief. You might forget your problems. For a little while anyway.

Then what happens? – nothing at first, you’ve just been ignoring your feelings and you’ll just be fine for a while and may even confuse it for a good time. but feelings you are ignoring don’t go away, they don’t heal you aren’t dealing with them you are burying them. and they will come back to haunt you!

The pain doesn’t go away it builds up and after a while even the things we are doing to avoid the pain start to cause it! And then what do we do? More of it of course!

You can swap your addictions for a bit but eventually, we end up where all addicts end up. Where we can’t live with our addictions any more – but we have no idea how to live with ourselves without them.

It’s not just drink and drugs other, people use work, shopping, sex even exercise to avoid their feelings and if you don’t think you’ve got addictions you haven’t looked.

Have you noticed how every time you feel emotional discomfort you reach for your phone?

Find what you are looking for

But addictions is about something else too – Addicts are chasing something they are looking for more.

Why do people take mind-altering substances? Whether that is heroin or sugar I would have thought the answer was obvious. People take mind-altering substances because they want to alter their state of mind – and why wouldn’t you want to do that?

Addicts share a common dilemma – ordinary consciousness is not enough, there is something missing we are seeking more. Well, I’ve got news for you, no matter how affluent you are or how successful you become, it will never be enough. There is more, ordinary consciousness isn’t enough, there are much fuller states of mind and the search is right and noble – It’s the just methodology I question.

What you are seeking is not outside of you. It is within you – the very place you have been avoiding. Mindfulness puts you in touch with your innermost core, you find that nothing is missing and as you allow those feelings that you have been blocking to arise you can open up to true love peace, and joy and discover a depth to yourself and then the world you never knew existed.

That’s the cure for addiction.