The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery: A Practical Guide to Regaining Control over Your Life

by Lawrence Peltz MD

Mindfulness, the quality of attention that combines full awareness with acceptance of each moment, just as it is, is gaining broad acceptance among mental health professionals as an adjunct to treatment. Because at the heart of addiction is the fear of painful emotional states, addicts compulsively seek drugs and alcohol to avoid or escape emotional pain. Mindfulness, on the other hand, helps us develop greater acceptance and ease with life’s challenges, as well as greater self-compassion.

Here, Dr. Lawrence Peltz, who has worked as an addiction psychiatrist for nearly three decades, draws from his clinical experience and on the techniques of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) to explain the fundamental dynamics of addiction and the stages of the recovery process, and also gives us specific mindfulness exercises to support recovery.

Genres: Addiction, Psychology, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 8, 2013

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find this one tough to review.

First off it's hard to actually work out what this book is trying to achieve. The title suggests that using mindfulness will set you on path to recovery. But that's not what the book is about at all.

Instead the book very briefly teaches you mindfulness, meditation and gives a few stories about people that employed certain mindfulness techniques to settle a panic attack or prevent an urge to use. This probably makes up about 20% of the book.

The rest is tales of addiction. Which is great as its always good to hear how people conquered such struggles. I just don't think the book is marketed correctly and is very misleading.

A good read if you want to learn the basics of meditation and mindfulness. Also a good read if you want a doctors point of view on addiction treatment and recovery. But in no way is this a book that will get you give you a mindful way to recover or attempt to tackle addiction to anything.

I will say however that there is some good advice for on how to deal with urges which may be valuable to some.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3 as it did have some interesting stories.

[Andrea Levin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peltz's The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery does a nice job of exploring the role of mindfulness meditation practices in addiction treatment. I appreciate that it is written by an addiction psychiatrist and discusses how co-occurring mental illnesses and experiences like trauma and PTSD affect addiction and recovery. The book also presents mindfulness meditation as a treatment that is just one part of a recovery plan that could also include the use of support groups, therapies (such as cognitive behavioral therapy and Internal Family Systems therapy), and mental health medications. This book is full of practical advice and exercises. I will be keeping and revisiting this book for future reference.

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are going through a tough time in life, be it an addiction to food/drugs/alcohol/gambling or etc., I’d suggest picking up a copy of this book. At its best, the book can be a profound read; giving you a fighting chance at kicking a craving that creeps up in your head on a random Tuesday afternoon. At it’s worst, the book is hard to relate to at times (the author explores a wide spectrum of addictions and concurrent disorders so there are chapters that won’t always resonate). Nonetheless, it will provide a few new techniques that you can add to your addiction-fighting toolkit. Highly recommend.

[Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories of individual situations were interesting, but I really didn’t get it. My life would have to be incredibly simple to follow these practices. I tried to figure a way to do it, but in this world with responsibilities to take care of ones parents, adult children, grandchildren, work and household chores, I personally don’t have this luxury. But I’m open to it and will attempt to figure it out and if I do may change my review. It was a difficult read for me.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked that the author recognizes and admits to the complexity of humanity, addiction and recovery. He states in examples, his own life and in summary, that mindfulness is not a cure all. Many meditation and mindfulness and recovery books seem written by zealots, as biased in their assessment and commitment to their own beliefs or experiences assuming if we all do what they do, our lives will perfect. Peltz writes and works from knowing that isn’t true. A combination of tools may be required. I appreciated that freshness and honesty. Subsequently I enjoyed the book.

To an earlier review, publishers write titles to sell books. As a result, particularly in the self help space, titles seem to be inevitably to over promise. In this case, Peltz provides numerous ways mindfulness can help deal with life, regardless of whether one is in recovery. He provides several sets of step by step instructions for various settings in which one might want to add meditation to dealing with the situation, desires, thoughts or emotions one is experiencing.

Recommended if you are exploring the topics of addition, recovery or simply feel the complexity of life might warrant trying something like mindfulness.

[Kasandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

More geared to alcoholics and drug addicts than smokers, I did use this book to help me stop smoking, and so far so good! So I do recommend it. A lot of the information is basic, if you're not new to therapy or to mindfulness, but there are helpful checklists, anecdotes, and quotes throughout.

My favorites: "If you are in the past, you get depressed, and if in the future, anxious. Only in the present can you be mindful. Where are your feet?"

"Our life puzzle is in constant motion. Addictions are an attempt to control or freeze the action. Mindfulness helps us to become aware of this tendency and to choose to surrender to life just as it is."

[Antwan Fisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on addiction and mindfulness that I’ve had the pleasure of reading, over, and over, and over again! Thank you.

[Stephanie’s Libby Antics · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tis good, nothing new to me but that’s okay.

Mindfulness seems to be the new giant, world capturing phenomenon. I think that’s a good thing

[Maksym Bakriiev · Rating 5 out of 5]

одна из лучших книг о зависимости и как ее контролировать, которую я читал, просто супер

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, particularly the accounts of individuals referenced throughout.

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mindfull Path To Addiction Recovery is Dr. Lawrence Peltz's official contribution to the recently burgeoning field of Mindfulness Based therapeutic modalities.

I'm am personally so dang glad mindfulness is trending up like it is. However, I do know quite a few "true bu" Buddhist hipsters who disparage the secularization of this 3000 year old tradition.

As if being 3000 years old is necessarily a good thing. I don't know about you. But I can think of plenty of 3000 year old shit that is really really bad. Like incest, chattel slavery and locust plagues to name but a few examples.

Sometimes modernizing 3000 year old shit is good. Like when Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis modernized the venerable 3000 year old tradition of doctors not washing their hands between patients. People bitched about that one too, but as it turns out, it was a nice little update to the practice of medicine.

Anyway, like it or not, mindfulness meditation is being secularized, modernized and integrated into numerous and diverse fields such as pain management, psychotherapy and addiction treatment.

Again, I'm confused by the hipster Buddhists who bitch about this. This seems like it would be welcome news. I'm actually not at all surprised. Hipsters will literally complain about anything. In fact, one time I overheard a dude with ironic facial hair and skinny jeans decry "did you hear about how they just cured malaria, that's fuckin bullshit man". Okay not really, I actually just made that up. But you get the point right. They love to complain.

Dr. Peltz is apparently a young baby boomer (the highest generation) and he lets it show a good bit in his writing. And that's by and large a good thing in this isolated instance.

Like all baby boomer's worth their salt, he sprinkles a little poetry into the mix. In fact he gives addiction and codependent poet laureate Ms. Mary Oliver lots of air time:

"You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

-Mary Oliver

So true, so true. Unless the soft animal of your body loves heroin. Than by all means, absolutely try not to do that, mindfully of course.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's not much more that can be written about mindfulness, and once you've read, say, five books on the topic, it's mostly repetition. But this book has a wider scope and has helpful things to say about addiction treatment from a mindfulness/Buddhist angle as well as other modalities. And because it's a Shambhala book, it's soulfully literate and absorbing. Recommended for clinicians and people who are struggling with addiction themselves.