Meditation for Addiction: The Benefits

Meditation (blame the media) is often shown as something silly that hippies and tree-huggers do to make themselves feel superior to everyone else. This is not the case, though. Many people do and will benefit from incorporating mediation practices into their daily lives.

The process of recovering from drug and alcohol addiction is different for every single person affected by it. Practicing mindfulness techniques that help with overcoming stress, coping with triggers and cravings, and dealing with anxious thoughts and emotions can speed up and streamline your recovery efforts.

Below is a breakdown of what exactly meditation is, its various types, and how our holistic addiction therapy program can benefit you or a loved one.

Meditation, or mindfulness techniques, come in many different types but most involve focusing on a single point of reference, such as one’s breath or bodily sensations, or a word or phrase known as a mantra. Below are a few popular types of meditation techniques:

• Mindfulness Meditation: This technique involves focusing on the present moment and accepting it without judgment and is effective at helping reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus, and promote emotional well-being.
• Spiritual Meditation: This technique involves reflecting on life’s big questions and connecting with a higher power. Wayward souls often find meaning and purpose in their lives through this method.
• Focused Meditation: This technique involves focusing on a single reference point, such as your breath or the flame of a candle. It can help you improve your concentration and shed excess stress.
• Movement Meditation: This technique involves incorporating movement (such as walking or yoga) into meditation. This form of meditation is an all-rounder, as it helps improve both your physical and emotional well-being.
• Mantra Meditation: This technique involves repeating a word or phrase, known as a mantra, to help focus the mind. Oftentimes you will create your mantra to use in this method.
• Transcendental Meditation: This technique involves repeating a mantra for 20 minutes twice a day while sitting with one’s eyes closed. You probably recall seeing this expressed in the media often, usually depicted as someone humming with legs crossed and their palms held facing up and open. It can help reduce stress and anxiety, improve focus, and promote emotional well-being.
• Loving-Kindness Meditation: This method concerns concentrating on feelings of love and kindness towards yourself and others around you. It is good for reducing negative emotions and promoting positive ones.
• Body Scan Meditation: This technique involves focusing on each part of your body, beginning with your toes and working up to your head.
• Visualization Meditation: This technique involves imagining a scene vividly and using all five senses to add as much detail as possible. Creative minds find this method particularly appealing.

Meditation has been shown to have numerous positive effects on the human brain. Here are some of the most notable effects:

• Reduced activity in the brain’s “Me Center”: Research has shown that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts.
• Rivaling antidepressants for depression and anxiety: A meta-analysis found that meditation reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety equivalent to antidepressants.
• Volume changes in critical brain areas: Research shows that eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) increases cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which controls learning and memory, and in certain parts of the brain dealing with emotion regulation. This research further confirms decreases in the size of the amygdala, which is the brain’s fear and anxiety command center.
• Improved concentration and attention: One study found that just a couple of weeks of meditation training helped people’s focus and memory during the verbal reasoning section of the GREs.
• Reduced anxiety: Research determined that mindfulness meditation can reduce anxiety by affecting changes in brain regions associated with thoughts about the self. Mindfulness meditation has been clinically great at treating social anxiety disorder.
• Preserved aging brain: One study found that long-term meditators had younger-looking and functioning brains than non-meditators as they aged.

Meditation and other mindfulness approaches have proven effective at treating drug and alcohol addiction and at reducing the consumption of alcohol, cocaine, and amphetamines. Meditation helps people relieve stress and cope with triggers that might lead to relapse and delving into drug and alcohol use again. Meditation also helps increase self-awareness and gives people the ability to identify and address how they are feeling at any given moment.

Mindfulness techniques can be incorporated into an addiction treatment program in various ways. For example, they are often used as complementary therapies alongside other treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication-assisted treatment (MAT), and they can also be used as standalone treatments for addiction.