The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery by Lawrence Peltz

Author:Lawrence Peltz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

PART THREE

Challenges to Recovery

11

Addiction, Recovery, and the Body

BEN CHANGED HIS LIFE by changing his relationship to his body. We have known each other for twelve years, since he first walked into the Bournewood-Caulfield day treatment program, and today he is just visiting. I immediately notice the brightness of his eyes and his energy, that he has lost weight and looks strong. Ben has been sober for twenty years but has had a hard life. Sexually abused from a young age, then discovering he was gay, he drank as a means of numbing himself. Though alcohol did allow him to engage socially and sexually, it also left him increasingly hopeless and suicidal. Ben stopped drinking but then overate, leading to obesity, chronic back pain, and having to leave his job. His road to recovery has been long and complex.

I asked him to reflect on the subjects of addiction, depression, mindfulness, and recovery. He said, “To me, it’s all one. My addiction and mental illness can each trigger the other, and then I am in a hole. I need to be present every day; I can only do one day. I tell the people I work with (in AA) that if you are in the past, you get depressed, and if in the future, you are anxious. Only in the present can you be mindful. I ask them, ‘Where are your feet?’ It sounds simple, but it helped me.”

In recent years, Ben did not drink when he became depressed but would go into a trance—basically, dissociating as a form of self-medication. He would just sit alone staring at the wall, move as little as possible, and go into fantasy. He did not shower or sleep on a regular schedule. He would not eat for long periods, then binged on food to subdue his agitation, anger, and sadness. All of this played havoc with his body. He gained weight and became stiff, which was terrible for his back and joints. He was also quite tense, which further aggravated his pain. Then he would become more depressed and withdrawn and would deteriorate so badly that the choices were either to die or to seek help.

Mindfulness practice helped Ben to become more aware of this process. He could feel himself beginning to leave his body and saw that he had a choice to numb out or take a walk to shift his energy. He said, “I stopped just existing and was more aware of what I was doing.” He feels anxiety in his body and breathes through it. Changing eating habits was critical. Ben became much more conscious of the experience of hunger, and he stopped using food to escape his feelings “for the most part.” “It is what it is,” he told me. “It’s progress, not perfection.”

Embodied awareness gave Ben a new perspective. He became aware of destructive patterns and saw how they worked. Some of what he had to accept in the beginning was how much he wanted to dissociate from his feelings and the pros and cons of doing that.

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