The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery: A Practical Guide to Regaining Control over Your Life
By Lawrence Peltz ’74. Shambhala, 2013. For patients, families, clinicians and anyone interested to learn more about the application of mindfulness practice to our problematic habits, this book explores the nature of addiction and the integration of mindfulness meditation into treatment. Addiction is a means of managing painful or intolerable experience and begins with something we all do—seek pleasure and avoid pain—and creates a cycle of suffering by disabling our capacities for maturity and clear thinking. Mindfulness can be a counterforce to addictive processes by bringing a balanced awareness to our experience as it unfolds in each moment. 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. Also discussed are the interrelationships of mindfulness with recovery, psychotherapy, and medication in the treatment of addiction and dual diagnosis.