Can this method of meditation help me with my drug addiction thanks
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Hi @Robb, welcome to the Night Club!
There have been some really great conversations in Night Club about the healing powers of practicing meditation and lucid dreaming.
I would highly recommend you check out @Andrew’s interview with Dr. @judbrewer: Interview with Dr. Judson Brewer
Join Andrew and Dr. Judson Brewer as they take a close look at the nuts-and-bolts of addiction, and how it relates to non-lucidity. Judson shares the recent work of his lab, and the neuroscience that helps us understand how we get hooked into virtually anything, including our dreams. We’re addicted to thinking, to distraction, to ourselves, to technology, even to love. The conversation moves to a look at the swept up continuum, a scientific description of how we get sucked into things (including non-lucid dreams), and how to pull ourselves out. In addition to the famous default mode network, Dr. Brewer discusses other parts of the brain that play an active part in our craving, and how meditation plays a leading role in transforming craving and addiction. Awareness practices hit the “pause button” in the machinery of addiction, and can radically transform previously intractable cravings. Using tenets talked about by the Buddha, the discussion turns to how ancient teachings (like the 12 links of dependent origination) have modern applications. Learn how ignorance in the past expresses itself as craving in the present – how craving is “applied ignorance.” Judson says that “Willpower is more myth than muscle,” and that one of the best ways to work with any form of addiction is to first relate to it, and to discover that the best way out of craving is to go into it. Dr. Brewer is a rare scientist who joins the best of the West with the best of the East, augmenting the discoveries of the wisdom traditions with contemporary science.
These interviews with Roger Walsh and Lama Surya Das also discuss addiction in the context of lucidity and mindfulness.
Dr. Walsh then turns to addiction, stating that we’re “addicts by nature,” which dovetails into our unconscious addiction to non-lucidity.
The conversation turns to “substance abuse” at the level of thought addiction, and a look at the important difference between experience (nyam) vs. realization (tokpa) on the path. After a brief look at psychedelics, and revealing that LSD are his very initials, Lama Surya Das offers a “State of the Union” address about the status of Buddhism in the West.
You may also be interested in these interviews with Charlie Morley and Robert Waggoner for more on the healing powers of lucid dreaming.
I hope you find some helpful resources here.
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Hi Robb! You might be interested in checking out Refuge Recovery: https://refugerecovery.org
It’s an organization that’s specifically dedicated to helping people who are struggling with addiction through the method of meditation.
Wishing you all the best,
Sara
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