Tails of Recovery. Nancy A. Schenck

Meditation is a form of meditation that seeks to promote a heightened, keen awareness of one’s experience. The focus in mindfulness meditation is on the full range of one’s physical, emotional, and cognitive experience. Mindfulness also promotes a perspective of open, nonjudgmental acceptance, as opposed to automatic or habitual evaluative reactions. Although full awareness of experience is a goal, and calmness and serenity are not the goal of mindfulness meditation, calmness and serenity do often come about as by-products of practicing mindfulness meditation.

      Mindfulness Meditation is thought to be helpful in reducing stress and may also be useful in the treatment of a variety of mental disorders. Research is beginning to focus on possible mechanisms through which this form of meditation may affect physical and psychological well-being, such as altering immune function.*

      *From the US National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research

      One of the things I’ve done consistently in my recovery is meditate and pray on a daily basis. Even during meditation and prayer, other thoughts sometime intrude on this most conscious and disciplined effort to stay in the moment. While I could become frustrated, angry, or self-critical, I try to accept it without judging either the thoughts or myself. When it happens, I’ve learned to simply become consciously aware that my mind has drifted away from the moment and use that awareness to refocus my attention on the here and now.

      When I am fully mindful of this moment, I am genuinely emotionally and spiritually available. When I’m able and content to simply be here, now, my heart is accessible to the will of my higher power. When I am present-centered, I have the capacity to get out of my own way. As the living embodiment of present-centeredness, Sunny helps me stay in the moment and more connected to my spiritual center.

      I still find myself struggling to stay in the moment. It is an ongoing challenge. I regularly give myself reminders to “be here, now.” One of the few things I know well is that the only way to get better at anything—sports, cooking, work, or using the tools of recovery—is to learn and practice the techniques that work for me. Fortunately, it’s about “progress not perfection.”* Although Sunny seems to have achieved perfect present-centeredness, for me, staying in the moment, much like recovery itself, is a journey, rather than a destination.

      For this addict, there is a direct correlation between staying present-centered and maintaining an unwavering positive attitude for myself and others; the more mindful I am of this moment, the greater my capacity for constructive, helpful action for myself and others, and the better able I am to be present-centered.

      My relationship with Sunny improves the quality of my character and enhances my humanity. When I am called upon to expand my conscious focus to include the pets in my life, I automatically become less self-centered, more aware of the presence and needs of others, and more present-centered. As I become more mindful of the many blessings in my life and learn how to maintain conscious contact with my gratitude for them, my spirituality deepens, my recovery gets stronger, and I take a few more steps toward grace.

      * From Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 60. © 1939, 1955, 1976, 2001 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved. The phrase from Alcoholics Anonymous is reprinted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (“AAWS”) Permission to reprint this phrase does not mean that AAWS has reviewed or approved the contents of this publication, or that AAWS necessarily agrees with the views expressed herein. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism only – use of this excerpt in connection with programs and activities which are patterned after A.A., but which address other problems, or in any other non-A.A. context, does not imply otherwise.

      “As long as life

      remains,

      recovery is

      possible.”

CHAPTER TWO Addiction Is…

      Addiction is an all-consuming disease that often expresses itself as an overwhelming lack of concern for just about everything. The further the disease progresses, the deeper sufferers become immersed in the illness, the more their perception narrows until there is almost nothing left but the quest for more, be it more drugs, more alcohol, more food, or more “fill in the blank.” The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as “a primary, chronic, neurobiological disease.” It is a brain illness “with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations.” It is characterized by alterations in the brain that lead to habitual and compulsive drug-seeking and use despite demonstrated harmful consequences.

      Many years ago, addiction was merely a pharmacologic term that referred to a person’s using enough drugs to cause tolerance—the requirement that greater dosages of a drug are necessary over time to produce an identical effect. While tolerance is part of the bigger picture, addiction is incredibly complex. It includes genetic, social, environmental, and behavioral components. Additionally, with some drugs, non-pharmacological factors may actually cooperate with the drug’s pharmacological actions to encourage compulsive substance use or abuse and ultimately lead to addiction.

      Many medical professionals agree addiction causes changes in the brain’s mesolimbic pathway, which is one of four neural pathways in the brain. Scientists believe it is involved in producing pleasurable feelings and is associated with feelings of reward and desire. What all this boils down to is that not only is the predisposition to addiction present in the brains of those who have it—whether they use drugs or not—but once manifested by the ingestion of substances, changes take place in the part of the brain where we feel good things.

      Human brains are wired to ensure we repeat life-sustaining activities by associating those activities with pleasure or reward. Whenever this reward circuit is kicked into gear, the brain makes a note that something is happening that needs to be remembered and repeated. It then teaches us to do the action again and again, without thinking. Because drugs of abuse, including the drug alcohol, stimulate the same circuit in our brains, many professionals believe we learn to abuse drugs in the same way we learn to repeat life-maintaining behaviors. This means that once addicts (people with the disease of addiction) use certain drugs, their brain fools them into thinking the substance is necessary for survival and demands they continue to eat, drink, smoke, snort, inject, or get it into their systems by any means possible. Emergency room records can testify to the various creative methods many addicts use to get drugs into their bodies.

      Contrary to the findings of a vast number of eminent clinicians and researchers, some people believe drug abuse and addiction is a social failing or lack of moral values. They claim addicts could stop taking drugs if only they would change their behavior. Addiction, they say, begins when an individual makes a decision to use and then abuse drugs. Additionally, there are those who argue that addiction is hardly a disease, since the very act of ingesting or injecting a substance appears to be a self-willed decision. Most scientists, however, profoundly disagree. Dr. Avram Goldstein, a pharmacologist and neuroscientist whose career has been devoted primarily to research on addictive drugs, best explains the reality of addiction.

      Goldstein, who for thirty-four years was the director of the Addiction Research Foundation at Stanford University, says that when animals are given an opportunity to repeatedly choose heroin by pressing a lever or engage in other life-sustaining activities such as eating, “that animal will press the lever repeatedly, ignoring the other activities. …It will become a heroin addict. A rat addicted to heroin is not rebelling against society, is not a victim of socioeconomic circumstances, is not a product of a dysfunctional family, and is not a criminal. The rat’s behavior is simply controlled by the action heroin (actually morphine, to which heroin is converted in the body) [has] on its brain.”

       So if drugs are bad, then why use them?

      The initial decision to take drugs is most often a voluntary action. This action is usually based on a variety of reasons, including (the