How Meditation Helped Me Quit Drinking

At 52, I stopped drinking to see what it would do. This step was the final phase of a gradual purification that began with the cessation of cigarettes at the age of 44. Then came the abandonment of strong alcohol. Then came giving up marijuana, a habit I picked up as a teenager and continued to use daily during the COVID-19 lockdown. Rather than letting the stress of the pandemic accelerate my addictions, I used the lockdown as a catalyst for cleansing.

This shift toward sobriety coincided with the deepening of my mindfulness practice, which I first tried during my partying years in my 20s, long before I committed to anything so transformative. In my 40s, I began a transcendental meditation (TM) practice to deal with depression, which had left me feeling isolated. My TM practice gradually evolved into the Buddhist mindfulness regime which provided me with the philosophical foundation to free myself from the toxic habits that had been part of my life for decades.

How did he do it? you may be wondering.

By solving a problem, you revisit its origins, the cause of the effect. How did we get here ? I wondered at a bar in San Juan last summer. And why am I stopping after all these years? The answer to the question “why” was easier, because I was embarrassed by the acts of deception I had committed at the lowest point of my drinking life, the erosion of values ​​that should have awakened me to the truth earlier. Not to mention the expenses and the impact on health. Yet finding an answer to the question “how” I got there required more intensive introspection.

As a teenager, I experienced a working-class culture that valued music, which led me to play trumpet in high school orchestras and jazz groups in the 1980s. Drug addiction was the one of the rites of passage for those of us who came of age amid the excesses of the 1970s and the despair of the 1980s, when much of the Bronx, where I grew up, was ravaged by fires, crime violence and corruption. . I began sipping beer before jazz band performances, a ceremony that my best friend and I would soon transfer to our local park on weekend evenings.

My father had given me my first taste of beer when I was 8 years old, but years would pass before my second sip of the drink that would distort my grip on reality in times to come. Being raised by a heroin addict taught me to set strict limits on what substances I would and would not try, but that didn’t stop me from becoming addicted to a drink that, for many, symbolized the masculinity. The macho men drank beer and smoked cigarettes, even pot. This is the image I wanted to project despite my growing fascination with Buddhism, a spark that began following a school visit to a temple in Chinatown when I was 7 years old.

Realizing I was gay at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic intensified the terror I felt, as it seemed like every gay man I knew in the 1980s was dying from the disease, a grim realization that coincided with the violence that caused my mother to expel my father in 1981, when I was only 10 years old. A grim start to a difficult decade ahead. There were so many issues to escape at the time – like the sexual secret I was beginning to carry around like a curse – that I didn’t know where to start. With little choice, I moved to Oregon with my mother’s family in 1988, when I was 17.

In Portland’s underground music scene, I found my tribe. As a closeted musician, this new sense of community brought me relief, even though the Gen I knew at home. My weekend drinking spilled over into the rest of the week as I experimented with club drugs in my twenties, including acid, mushrooms and ecstasy. Once out, I immersed myself in the gay subculture, where alcoholism reigned supreme as a coping mechanism for the cruelties of a homophobic society.

In my 40s, mindfulness meditation occupied the space that nightlife occupied once I took it seriously. Transcendental meditation made me discover inner calm through the repetition of a mantra, which appealed to my musical imagination. Embarking on an inner search, I settled into the calm that awaited me beneath the turbulent surface of anxiety and depression, a well-being so profound that I practiced TM daily. I revealed the person I was meant to be once I drank less and practiced more introspection, a gradual transition into friendship with myself.

Embarking on an inner search, I settled into the calm that awaited me beneath the turbulent surface of anxiety and depression, a well-being so profound that I practiced TM daily.

My first experiences with a practice rooted in mindfulness began while I was studying for Tibet House’s 100-hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training with David Nichtern during lockdown. At this point, in addition to TM, I had experimented with sound, metta, (kindness) and meditation techniques based on breathing. Yet the practice of mindfulness touched me on an even deeper level. When taught in the Buddhist context, a mindfulness discipline trains you to observe how thoughts, emotions, and perceptions arise and disappear. These “movements” of the mind can range from joyful to disturbing. By viewing these “movements” as separate and distinct from the mind, one can train oneself to elicit skillful states of mind while abandoning unhealthy states of mind. This is where the key to personal transformation lies.

Mindfulness of craving: a two-step practice

Disclaimer: I do not attend AA meetings or participate in recovery programs. While I drank heavily in the past, I gradually weaned myself off these tendencies, which might explain why it was easier for me to quit. Despite this, in addition to traditional recovery programs, I believe that a mindfulness practice can be very beneficial for serious drinkers and addicts.

The method that I share does not in any way replace the medical and/or therapeutic support that you may receive as part of your recovery. Quitting alcohol suddenly can have devastating health consequences for some drinkers. Although there is no one-size-fits-all solution, learning how your mind works and working with this idea can help you reduce your suffering by understanding how desire arises.

My daily practice is rooted in the tantric teachings of the Tibetan Nyingma and Kagyu schools, which provide a philosophical framework for transforming defilements – addiction in this case – into realization through skillful means. We turn waste into gold. Although this is easier said than done for many of my students, it presents an ancient system of managing the energy of craving through awareness and discipline. This is how we change.

The first step: Observe your triggers and desires as they occur.

A disciplined mindfulness practice will create distance between “you” and your thoughts. Notice your thoughts as they appear in the present moment, such as the thoughts that trigger your desire for alcohol. Observing this cause and effect reaction has taught me to control myself whenever it happens, such as when I enter a room full of strangers where alcohol is available, when I reach for a drink to make facing the embarrassment of social situations I didn’t want. to manage – a trigger that aroused my desire.

Second step : Redirect the energy of desire, thereby transforming it.

Once observed, you can redirect this energy into an alternative activity such as running, brisk walking, deep breathing, or any other physical outlet that will deplete the drive and emotions associated with the deep need for pleasure before acting on it . We divert this movement into meritorious activity rather than perpetuating the suffering that giving in to our defilement causes us. We transform desire energy from garbage into gold through awareness and discipline.

Another ritual that has been working for me is taking Nine Cleansing Breaths, a series of full inhales with the right nostril held in for the first three full exhales, the left nostril covered for the middle series of exhales, and no d ‘They’re in no hurry for the last three. . The practice I learned from Dzogchen teacher and scholar Keith Dowman involves relaxing my body with the infusion of oxygen, exhaling, and intensifying my awareness of the present moment.

Meditation helped me quit drinking by making me aware of the causes that lead to my desire for alcohol. My urges to get drunk diminished through the practice of noticing and redirecting that energy into skillful actions. By tapping into your present moment awareness, you can do the same with your habits. Bridging the addiction gap with healthier alternatives, such as mindfulness meditation, can be an auspicious step toward sobriety.