The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery

The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery: a Practical Guide to Regaining Control over Your Life explores the nature of addiction and the integration of mindfulness meditation into its treatment. Addiction is a means of managing painful or intolerable experience. It begins with something we all do--seek pleasure and avoid pain--and creates a cycle of suffering via disabling our capacities for maturity and clear thinking. Mindfulness can be a counter-force to addictive processes by bringing a balanced awareness to our experience as it unfolds in each moment. It is a skill and an attitude that allows us to see more clearly and make wiser choices.

The book blends clinical perspective, case examples and mindfulness exercises to illustrate the power of these deceptively simple practices to help us assume authority in our lives. It discusses the interrelationships of mindfulness with recovery, psychotherapy, and medication in the treatment of addiction and dual diagnosis. The book is for patients, families, clinicians and anyone interested to learn more about the application of mindfulness practice to our problematic habits.