Human nature has an inbuilt tendency toward addiction. For some people this tendency can lead to the destruction of their lives, through their addictive and obsessive–compulsive behaviors. However, we can all struggle with the nature of the mind that tends toward addiction. We could say that we are all in recovery.
Thinking itself can have an addictive quality to it. Thinking that tells us stories, thinking that can make us angry, thinking that can literally intoxicate us and impair the mind. Accidents and even fatalities can be caused when we are under the influence of this type of thinking. In Canada, distracted driving and aggressive driving are among the top five most common causes of car accidents.
We also live in a world where many of us self-medicate in response to our hardships. We turn to food, drugs, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, sex, relationships, work, consumerism, the Internet, video games, and so much more to help promote happiness in our lives.
Even those of us who do not think of ourselves as having an addiction might be regarded as addicted to life: to physical wellness, to youthfulness. We do not want to age, become sick, or die. In fact, many of us consciously or unconsciously do our utmost to prevent this. And why not? It is natural to want youthfulness, health, and longevity. However, such attachment will inevitably cause us suffering, so that the very way we seek to reduce our suffering just adds to it. This in turn can lead to trying to manage it with more addictive behavior. It’s not surprising, then, that addiction is so widespread.
You could say that recovery is widespread too. Many of us who have been dominated by addiction became addicted while trying to recover from a painful experience. We found that self-medicating took the sting out of the pain.
Many people who walk through the doors of a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or a Buddhist temple are looking for solace or recovery. And many who haven’t turned to a spiritual tradition have found peace in creative pursuits, campaigns, and recreational activities. The Buddha’s teachings can offer us an understanding of how the mind works. They are tools for working with a mind vulnerable to addiction. They can help us to overcome addictive and obsessive behaviors by cultivating a calm and clear mind without anger and resentments. The Buddha’s teachings can offer us a path to recovery.
A definition of addiction and of recovery
For the purposes of this book, what we mean by addiction is any mental or bodily habit that has a compulsive quality to it and causes us to suffer. This is a broad definition. It includes what we might normally think of as addictions, such as dependence on alcohol or pathological gambling. However, this definition also encompasses other behaviors such as binge eating or compulsive Internet use, which aren’t always considered to be true addictions. A key element is feeling unable to control an activity, even though it is causing us harm. For example, in the case of alcohol, if we have one glass of wine, we are unable to stop drinking until we have finished the bottle. Or with sexual activity, we can’t stop chasing sexual encounters, even though this behavior threatens other aspects of our lives. The reason for our broad definition is that the Buddha’s teachings presented in this book can be helpful to us whether our addiction is to heroin or an obsessive pattern of thinking that prevents us from leading a more fulfilling life. We may need additional assistance, such as medication to help us safely stop drinking if we are dependent on alcohol. However, in terms of learning to create a satisfying life free from our addictive tendencies, the same principles – the eight steps of this book – apply.
By recovery, we mean finding a path away from the trouble caused by our addictive tendencies. We see this as more than merely stopping the addictive behavior – hard as that can be. It is untangling the compulsive drives of our addiction to discover a richer and more fulfilling way of living.
Our personal stories
This book has arisen from the coming together of two very different journeys. The paths of our lives have led both of us (Valerie and Paramabandhu) to use the Buddha’s teachings to help people overcome addiction. Together we share our personal experiences, stories of addiction, and our knowledge of the Buddhist teachings, which we believe can help anyone who is ready for change on the difficult road of recovery from addiction. How we got here is something of a contrast!
Valerie’s story
When I was 28, I accidentally began my process of recovery from addiction. Unknown to me, meditation and the Buddhist teachings were about to transform my life. A friend invited me to sit with her meditation teacher from India because she believed it would help me with my stress levels. She was right. I walked into my friend’s house tense and hyper, and two hours later I was flying out the door. My body felt light, my voice had softened and I could hardly feel the pedals on my bike as I cycled home. I had not known bliss or peace like this before. “This is great,” I thought. “Cost me nothing, I didn’t drink, swallow, or sniff anything and I’m as high as a kite. I want some more of that.”
Needless to say, addict that I was, I became addicted. I soon learned you could go on a weekend or week-long meditation retreat. I went on as many retreats as possible just so I could have the feeling of tripping, of getting out of my body and my head, the experience of all my senses being heightened. I became ungrounded just as if I had taken a hallucinogenic drug. I was fortunate that I was not one of those beginners who experience the arising of past trauma while meditating. I thought I had found a new drug. However, once the retreat was over, I would, of course, experience the inevitable comedown. I would find my way to the nearest supermarket, buy and consume an entire gallon tub of Häagen-Dazs ice cream, and throw it up.
I cleaned up in the meditation rooms. I was a failed anorectic. I began eating more than my regime had allowed me, which was six cream crackers a day. The only way I knew to keep control of my food intake was by purging. I lost control over food and soon was eating food enough for five people in a day. I became a compulsive eater, obsessed with where I was going to get my next serving of food. I was a sugar and white-flour addict. Once I began eating this food I could not stop, and when I came to the end of what I was eating, I had to get more. It was as if somebody was driving my body toward the food. I went into a trance state and my only focus was on the food. In the midst of a binge I often lost awareness of all my senses, and my balance was completely thrown off-kilter. I went into a hypnotic surreal space, which was seductive. I even experienced real moments of happiness and contentment in the early days of bulimia nervosa. I also enjoyed the buzz of bingeing. Once I had reached a most uncomfortable limit in my body, I threw up and began all over again. I often threw up to experience the sensation of my whole body tingling. Bingeing and purging became my secret drug.
I could not walk past a food shop without entering it. I could not be in a room with food without eating and purging several times. You could not leave me alone with food and expect to come back to it. It would be eaten and I would concoct the most monstrous story to cover my secret. At the peak of my disease I was purging over forty times a day, sometimes after just one cookie, and sometimes after I had eaten two loaves of bread and a family tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken, and drunk as much fluid as possible. Once I almost killed myself when food lodged in my windpipe while I was trying to throw up. I jumped up and down, terrified, stuck my fingers down my throat, and suddenly I was relieved. I collapsed beside the toilet. Half an hour later when I came through, I went on another binge, and threw up down the toilet again. My front teeth crumbled from the acid in my stomach, my hair stopped growing, and my throat was continually hoarse. I told lies about missing food in friends’ houses. I broke every promise to myself to stop, and lay in bed many days wishing for a magic pill that could give me respite from the hell of my addiction.
I’m telling you all this because people often say: “What, you call bulimia an addiction?” My response was: “Yes. It was a matter of life or death. It’s one of the worst addictions anybody could possibly have.” It was my secret. Unlike someone with alcohol, drug, sex, shopping, and other addictions, I could not say: “Well that’s it. I will be abstinent from food for the rest of my life.” I needed to eat to survive. I had to find a relationship with food that was not going to kill me. I had to identify which foods were my drugs or alcohol, foods like sugar and white flour.
So, finally, what changed? It was that meditation and the teachings of the Buddha came into my life. I remember thinking after coming back from my third retreat: “I must be kidding myself if I think the teachings are not having an effect.” For the first time in my life, I experienced a temporary reprieve. I would go on retreat and miraculously not crave for more food and keep my meals down. My thoughts were not obsessed with food. While on retreat, I wanted the experience of the meditation high more than I wanted to eat and throw up. But I relapsed as soon as I returned home. I hated leaving the retreat and tried to maintain the blissful feelings by eating and purging. Then one day I said to myself: “Why don’t I chant those precepts I’ve been taught on a retreat? Maybe they will help.” There was always a part of me that wanted to let go of this addiction, but it was just a whisper in my heart. This whisper of recovery had not become louder because it was drowned out by thoughts of my addiction. The practice of morality woke me up. My whisper began to get louder, and thoughts of my addiction began to slowly quiet down. I was inspired by the five traditional precepts to help train the mind:
I undertake to abstain from harming life.
I undertake to abstain from taking the not-given.
I undertake to abstain from sexual misconduct.
I undertake to abstain from false speech.
I undertake to abstain from taking intoxicants.
I was not living in accordance with any of the precepts, but these teachings gave me the possibility of changing my life. They were not commandments or some order from an almighty being above, and I would not go to hell if I broke them. They were guidelines to live my life, and I began to see that, when I did not apply the precepts to my daily activities, unhappiness arose, and, when I worked at applying them to my life, more happiness arose. I began to recite them daily in the privacy of my home, and slowly I began to see a difference. I was starting to have some periods of abstinence in my life.
The practice of loving-kindness meditation also taught me to love myself. When I walked through the doors of a meditation temple, I had so much negative chatter and resentment whirring around in my head. It was sometimes hard to meditate, and so I began chanting mantras, sacred syllables that radiate the qualities of mythical beings in Buddhism. I chanted om mani padme hum, and imagined being held by the thousand arms of Avalokitesvara, a mythical being who radiates compassion to all beings. When I chanted his mantra I felt nourished, and my voices of self-hatred and resentment began to quiet. On my own I took up the practice of chanting several mantras to help transform my life, some of which we will share in this book.
Meditation was crucial for me to learn to love and like my friends better, to forgive those people who hurt me, and even to open up my heart to people I didn’t know. I learned all of this by sitting on a cushion and cultivating unconditional loving-kindness toward all these people. Through meditation I had begun to think differently. I had cultivated positive thinking in my life. The Buddha’s teaching of the four noble truths was one of the most important teachings for me in my personal recovery. When I first heard them, I understood them at the time to literally mean this:
There is suffering,
A path that will lead to more suffering,
An end of suffering,
And a path to lead me away from suffering.
I could see so clearly how I was on the path that led to more suffering, and, when I heard what I needed to do in order to be on the path that took me away from suffering, I felt inspired. I felt there was hope for me to find my way out of addiction. I knew the only way I could do this was to set up the conditions to help me transform my body, speech, and mind. Finally, the teaching that hit me right between the eyes was the idea of turning my life over to the inspiration of the Buddha (awakening my mind), to the teachings of the Buddha, and to the spiritual community, and placing all three ideals at the center of my life. This is what is called going for refuge to the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the sangha. I was not Buddhist, and yet the thought of going for refuge resonated for me. I could see so clearly that I was going for refuge to the food that was at the center of my life. All my decisions were based around how I could get my next binge and vomit up everything I had eaten in secret.
I didn’t want food at the center of my life any more, and I didn’t want the partying either. I began to see that I had been running to food to protect me from all sorts of uncomfortable and challenging experiences. I had sought refuge in food as if it were my mother, lover, and friend. It came first in my life. But it was a false refuge because in the long term I just spiraled into deeper suffering. If I was to have abstinence and sobriety of mind, a recovery that could be maintained, I needed to choose different things to put at the center of my life. I chose the ideal of waking up to reality (the Buddha); the teachings of the Buddha (the Dharma); and the spiritual community (the sangha). Notice I was not putting people at the center of my life, but the ideal of understanding the working of my own mind, the Buddhist teachings, and the idea of creating community around me that wanted to change, develop, and grow.
I’m also not saying that you have to place these three ideals at the center of your life to overcome addiction. I am saying that you have to find positive and healthy things to put at the center of your life if you want recovery. And that may include healthy relationships that help you to change, develop, and grow.
Admittedly, it took several years to maintain recovery. Most stimulants in my life seemed to naturally fall away, but I held on to bulimia, like a dog with a slipper in its mouth. Food was the one thing that was not going to be taken away from me. It was the one thing that had not abandoned me. Yes, I had periods of abstinence, but I always ended up relapsing. And once I was able to abstain from purging, I had to deal with the compulsive eating. I had to begin to find sobriety of thoughts and feelings.
It was winter 1998. I had completed six months of specialist treatment for my eating disorder, and I remember clearly thinking: “Well, I’ve done five years of therapy, and now specialized treatment. If this doesn’t work, I’m doomed.” I panicked. Shortly after this I went to Rome to visit friends at Christmas, and once again I relapsed. Too much Prosecco and too much good food. So I purged to deal with my consumption.
After a hedonistic holiday, I returned home distressed. That first night I lay in bed reflecting on my life ahead of me. Three days later I was about to go into rehearsal for my new one-woman show. I knew there was absolutely no way I could get through three weeks of rehearsal and a three-week run, bingeing and purging every day. I was terrified. The publicity for this event had already gone out, so I couldn’t cancel. What was I going to do? I agonized, tossed and turned in my bed, and told myself there was no way I could go through with the show. “Yes you can,” an inner voice whispered, and I shouted out loud: “How?” The voice just said: “Stop bingeing and throwing up.” I heard it crystal clear. The next day I woke up and that was it. I had found something that I wanted much more than my bulimia. I wanted to do this show.
I was abstinent for eighteen months, while cultivating some sobriety of mind, and then I lapsed for a couple of days. Notice I say lapsed and not relapsed. Fortunately I had enough recovery to know that I wanted my abstinence and sobriety more than the hell of my addiction. I remember clearly knowing I had a choice: to pick myself up from this small slip, or relapse and spiral back down into my addiction. It was hard, but I knew I did not want to relive the hell of my disease, and that I had to commit to a different way of living. It was at this point that I chose to walk away from my addictions and move toward healthier things in my life. I began to set up the conditions to help me in my decision.
I began cultivating five new senses: the five spiritual faculties. Sharpening my faculties of faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom has been the backbone of my sobriety. Staying abstinent was the easy part. Not bingeing and throwing up was tough, but my fear of living as an anorectic/bulimic kept me abstinent.
However, cultivating a sober mind was much harder. I still had addictive behaviors. My energy of craving just latched on to other things, like sexual relationships and going to the gym obsessively. In fact, you could say my first addiction was to be in control of my life at the age of four. I was living with my fourth family, and there were many more to come. My second addiction was sniffing shoe conditioner, and my third shoplifting, but at the bottom of it all my biggest addiction was the craving to be loved and noticed. It just manifested through different disguises.
The practice of meditation was the container that held me throughout my radical changes. That was what gave me sobriety. Abstaining from purging and compulsively eating was only the first stage. Without abstinence I had no chance of healthy sobriety. Living my life more in line with the five precepts brought about sobriety of mind and a new happiness in my life. The practice of loving-kindness and mindfulness meditations restored me to sanity.
The momentum of wanting to continue to change emerged at the center of my life, and so most of my decisions were about change and transformation. I came to one of the twelve-step recovery programs ten years after my journey of recovery began. I moved to a new country, with no Buddhist community to support me. A close friend introduced me to the twelve-step program, which I have much gratitude for. I experienced being in a room of people that had suffered and were still suffering from a disease similar to mine. Working the twelve-step program has given me a fresh perspective on my own recovery and deepened my spiritual practice. There are many things that can support our recovery. I wholeheartedly believe that meditation, chanting mantras, a practice of mindfulness, reciting the five training principles, and an understanding of some of the core Buddhist teachings can help anyone overcome addiction. It saved my life. I will continue to tell my story to help save other people’s lives. What I have to offer is my recovery.
I started working in addiction in 1992 as a psychiatrist in training. At the time it seemed to be just by chance. Only later was I able to see the patterns that led me there. For as long as I can remember, I have had a strong desire to find meaning in my life. I wasn’t unhappy in my childhood and no big tragedies befell me, yet growing up I yearned for something more satisfying and fulfilling in my life. I had a loose sense that I wanted to help people and, since I liked biology, I decided to study medicine.
At university I was exposed to a greater range of ideas than I had come across in my rural home life. In particular, I was affected by some of my close friends who, taking inspiration from existential thinkers, sought meaning through creativity. The basic message seemed to be that life was inherently meaningless, but that one could find meaning through being creative. As students of the liberal arts, my friends were pursuing creativity through writing poetry or novels. My time was taken up studying anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry, which I experienced as a dry slog to get through.
Instead of creating art, I thought that perhaps the way forward for me was to be creative with myself, in the sort of person I was. This idea gathered momentum as I met more fellow students with an interest in personal development. I found a whole peer group of medical students who were interested in such areas as psychotherapy, complementary medicine, yoga, and meditation. One friend was especially interested in Buddhist meditation. I had had some contact with Buddhism in Sri Lanka, but had not been that impressed by its philosophy as I had understood it. Nevertheless, after many long debates with my friend, I found my way to an introductory meditation class at the London Buddhist Centre.
Unlike Valerie, my initial experience of meditation was not great. I was disappointed to find that I wasn’t a born meditator. Whenever I sat to meditate, my mind seemed to prefer to plan or go to sleep. However, the ideas in Buddhism spoke to me. I liked the pragmatic emphasis on testing out the Buddha’s teachings in your own experience, rather than following them with blind belief. I liked the vision that Buddhism presented of an unfolding path leading to greater and greater freedom. As I came to know Buddhism more deeply, I also liked the stress given to altruism: helping to alleviate the suffering of all beings. In fact, as I learned, finding my own freedom and helping others were two facets of one experience that culminated in the twin qualities of wisdom and compassion, which characterized the Awakened mind of the Buddha.
As time went on, I committed myself more fully to the study and practice of Buddhism, while in parallel I completed my medical studies, qualified as a doctor, and then started specializing in psychiatry. Given the interest I had gained from Buddhism in the study of the mind, psychiatry was an obvious choice. After I had completed my basic training in psychiatry, I needed to choose which area of psychiatry to specialize in and apply for training in that specialism. However, deciding what branch to go into was a quandary. I had been drawn to psychotherapy for a long time, so I put off applying for specialty training by taking another basic training-grade post, one half of which was in psychotherapy. The other half of the post was in substance misuse.
I found that I enjoyed working with the drug users I met in this job. Part of my work was prescribing methadone but, alongside this, I was helping people to change their lives. Most of the people who made a successful break from illicit drug use found new strands that made their lives more satisfying. This could be taking up a new hobby such as learning to play drums, helping out in a home for stray dogs, or reconnecting with old non-using friends or family. Although I didn’t have to overcome dependence on heroin, in some ways we were all in the same boat. We were all trying to find something in our lives that provided sufficient meaning to help us go on each day, and to let go of unhelpful habits. I decided to specialize in addiction psychiatry.
By now, I was already teaching meditation and Buddhism at the London Buddhist Centre, and began to feel that Buddhism might have something to offer people in recovery from addiction. A colleague and I published a paper on Buddhism and addiction, outlining some preliminary ideas.1 However, the ideas we discussed in that paper lay mostly dormant until a decade later, when the practice of using mindfulness as a therapeutic approach became more widespread in the UK.
Mindfulness is deliberately paying attention to our moment-by-moment experience, with an attitude of friendliness and curiosity. It is a key part of the Buddha’s teaching, so I had already been practicing and teaching mindfulness for some years. Jon Kabat-Zinn was the first person to popularize mindfulness as a therapeutic approach. In his stress clinic in Massachusetts, started in the late 1970s, he showed that a course of mindfulness could help people with chronic pain and with anxiety. We referred to his work in our paper on Buddhism and addiction, and wondered if mindfulness might also be helpful in addiction. However, at the time we didn’t take the idea any further, and, although mindfulness was gaining rapid ground in the US, it had not caught on across the Atlantic.
The use of mindfulness to help with mental and physical health problems only became popular in the UK with the work of Mark Williams and colleagues, who developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for depression.2 Drawing closely on Kabat-Zinn’s work, their studies indicated that mindfulness could help prevent relapse into recurrent depression. I started teaching MBCT at the London Buddhist Centre, and quickly saw that this could be adapted to prevent relapse into addiction. Soon I was teaching Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP), as I called it, both at the Buddhist Centre and in my NHS work.
Coincidentally, around the same time, Alan Marlatt – a key figure in the research and development of relapse prevention in addiction – produced a similar MBRP course with colleagues in Seattle. Clearly the time was ripe for using mindfulness to help with addiction. Although it is still early days in the use of mindfulness in addiction, preliminary studies are promising and suggest that it can be effective.
Having started to teach mindfulness to help with addiction, I began to question: could there be more than mindfulness in the Buddha’s teachings to help people suffering with addiction? This question was the seed that led to the ideas in this book.
Valerie’s own experience of overcoming addiction, described above, and our practice of teaching Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) suggested that there might be more riches in Buddhism that we could draw on. Out of our quest to make more of the Buddha’s teachings comes Eight-Step Recovery, which Valerie and I have explored and put together. Before we begin to describe the eight steps, we need to look at who the Buddha was.
Who was the Buddha?
The Buddha was a human being, not a god, who lived in northern India about 2,500 years ago. The title “Buddha” means “One who is Awake.” The man who became the Buddha was called Gautama. He was born into a wealthy family. Although materially he had a life of luxury, as a young man he was deeply troubled by the prospect that one day he would get sick, grow old, and die. He realized that the comfort of the palace he lived in and the abundant wealth that he would inherit could not prevent the deterioration of his body. They could not keep him secure and happy.
The legend says that Gautama went on a series of outings from the palace, during which he successively saw a sick person, an old person, a dead person, and then a wanderer or holy man – these are known as the four sights. The first three sights brought him face to face with the frailty of the body. However, it was the fourth sight – seeing a wanderer with a begging bowl – that gave him hope. And so he renounced everything he owned, left his wife and child, and “went forth” from the palace into a homeless wandering life in a search to end suffering.
The Buddha was in recovery
Initially, Gautama took up meditation. He sought out the foremost teachers of his day and quickly mastered their teachings. He experienced highly refined states of consciousness, but this did not provide him with the solution he was looking for.
Next he tried extreme self-discipline that included abstaining from all forms of indulgence: the practice of asceticism. His self-mortification included eating just one grain of rice a day, and sometimes walking around with one arm in the air for weeks. In his search for an end to suffering, Gautama became like an addict to asceticism. Like today’s addicts, he had learned how to master pain, or so he thought. He grew as thin as a skeleton, and did not budge from his addiction. Still he did not find an end to suffering. Until one day he realized he was getting nowhere.
It is said that Gautama, emaciated, was sitting on a riverbank, and remembered an incident from his childhood. He had been sitting in the shade of a rose-apple tree, watching his father plow the field – perhaps a ritual at the start of the season. Spontaneously, the young Gautama entered into an intensely pleasurable concentrated state of mind. Recalling this event turned his whole heart and mind around, and he realized why his practices of self-mortification were getting him nowhere. For the first time he could see clearly how extreme, dangerous, and useless they were. He saw that both extremes of worldly sensual pleasures and painful self-mortification would continue to cause suffering. The pleasure that had arisen under the rose-apple tree was not forced, like the meditation he had learned after going forth, nor did it lead to being caught up in the body or craving, in the way that indulgence in ordinary sensual pleasures did.
In fact, it was the path of moderation he needed to discover, the path that was not full of self-indulgence or self-mortification. The Buddha called this path the Middle Way. He realized that it was through the practice of meditation that he would find an end to suffering, but meditation that was not forced and that allowed natural pleasure to arise in the mind. He vowed to sit concentrated, mindfully, until he attained Enlightenment and became Awake to the reality of the human condition.
Letting go of his obsessive behavior was not easy. There are many versions of the story that follows, but all refer to how the Buddha’s mind was seized by strong emotions like craving, doubt, and anxiety. One legend says that, when the Buddha committed to sit, be still, and meditate beneath the bodhi tree, every demon one could think of arose in his mind. It is said that Mara, the lord of misfortune, destruction, sin, and death, arose in his mind.
However, he experienced this with great calm, without wavering from his goal. He had nightmares, and he was tempted with images from his past. He came face-to-face with conceit, arrogance, and pride. He was challenged by ill will, sensual desire, doubt, restlessness, self-righteousness, and ignorance. Things became even worse when Mara tried to entice the Buddha with his three daughters, called Craving, Boredom, and Passion. Yet the Buddha did not waver from his stillness. You could liken this to the Buddha experiencing a detoxification on the deepest level and coming right up against his raw mind.
The legend goes on to say that Mara ordered every evil spirit he could think of to attack the Buddha, in the hope of deterring him from his goal. However, the Buddha was unperturbed. He remained calm and observed the evil spirits as if he were watching something harmless. The Buddha transformed the evil spirits into lotus blossoms.
Finally, Mara threatened him with the taunt that Gautama did not have the right to an Awakened mind, the right to see things as they really are. The Buddha Gautama touched the earth and said: “Let the earth be my witness.” Instead of pushing Mara out of his mind, he embraced Mara by saying: “You are my mother and father. You are my liberation. From the beginningless past to the endless future, you and I are one.”
It’s believed that it was at this moment that Gautama became a Buddha, Awakened. Gautama had reached the end of his path of suffering. He had gained recovery from the human condition – the existential troubles of human existence such as aging and death. He finally understood the workings of his mind, and was freed from the mental bonds that had caused him suffering. He saw that the idea of a fixed self was part of the illusion of the mind. He could see clearly that, when he identified with his perceptions, his thoughts, feelings, and consciousness, he was deluding himself, creating unnecessary suffering in his life. He also saw that everything that arises is dependent upon conditions, that nothing exists independently, and that we are all interconnected. With these realizations he saw how we as human beings create our misery and our joy, but he also saw that there was an end to suffering. This is what is called the Buddha’s Enlightenment.
The Buddha thought nobody would understand him, since he recognized that the truths were subtle, even counterintuitive, and hard to fathom. However, he soon realized he must teach what he knew. For the remaining forty-five years of his life, he taught men and women from all walks of life and helped them to find the freedom he had discovered. The Buddha offered his recovery to the world. His teachings can release us from the sting of suffering, so we do not need to self-medicate or push away the reality of life. The Buddha’s example prepares us for the tough road of recovery. There will be many things that will challenge us along the way. As we start to leave our addiction behind and step onto the path of recovery, we are likely to meet our demons. Yet if we cultivate a spacious mind, even though we may relapse many times, we can learn to embrace our demons and find recovery.
The Buddha’s teaching
It is believed that the Buddha’s first teaching to his disciples referred to addiction. He says:
There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (The Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana.3
The Buddha understood the way the human mind works: we tend to get caught up in addictive or compulsive habits as we pursue pleasure or try to avoid pain. The starting point for setting ourselves free is to understand the nature of what it is to be human in this world; we must understand the human condition. Like the Buddha, we need to understand how our minds and hearts work, and how we create the suffering that we find ourselves in. The tragedy of addiction is that people turn to a substance or a distraction to attain freedom from their suffering, but end up in a vicious cycle of creating more suffering and craving. The core Buddhist teaching of the four noble truths sets this out clearly:
Even though they show the way to freedom, at first sight the truths may seem pessimistic. Each of us had a different response to this teaching when we first heard it.
Paramabandhu
I first came across Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Through my student eyes, pre-civil-war Sri Lanka seemed idyllic: lush beautiful countryside, palm-fringed sandy beaches, clear warm seas, and friendly people. And I was falling in love with another student who was traveling with us. We often saw monks in saffron robes and, curious to find out something about Buddhism, I picked up a tourist leaflet on the subject. The leaflet explained the four noble truths of the Buddha. First noble truth: all life is suffering. “Well no,” I thought, “my life is pretty much perfect.” Intoxicated with my youthful life, I put the leaflet down and didn’t give much more thought to Buddhism.
It was not until a few years later, when I learned more about Buddhism, that I understood the Buddha was not saying that life is only suffering. The Buddha acknowledged that life contains both pain and pleasure. He drew attention to our suffering, since pain can often motivate us to change. The suffering that I experienced was subtle, such as the tightness I felt when caught up in anxious planning, trying to get my own way. Although the discomfort was subtle, it had a powerful effect, driving me almost breathlessly from one activity to the next in the pursuit of pleasure and other rewards. And though I often obtained the rewards I was seeking, it meant that I was unable to fully enjoy them, and the pursuit kept my experience of myself narrow and superficial.
When I first heard the four noble truths, tears came to my eyes. They resonated within me and presented me with the opportunity to work with my life differently. The truths and meditation also changed my life profoundly. They shook me awake. They were the most exciting things I had learned in all my years of education.
The four noble truths turned everything around in my psyche. They made sense of my life. The truths taught me that I was not much different from anyone else. I was no longer alone with my labels that I had become so attached to, that had become my fixed false self. I realized that, although I had experienced my fair share of suffering because of the conditions I was born into, I had also piled a whole lot more suffering into my life through the choices I had made. The truths presented the possibility of freedom from that suffering: freedom from my addictions and the vicious cycle of bulimia nervosa. For the first time in my life, I could see a way out of my suffering. I could step onto the eightfold path.
I remember as a young child being mesmerized by the pet gerbil who used to run round and round frenetically on the inside of a wheel, and when it fell off onto the floor of the cage, it would jump right back on again. And I would wonder, why did it keep getting back on the wheel if it knew it was going to fall off? Several years ago, I realized I was just like the gerbil running frenetically around in the cycle of suffering, falling off and getting straight back on without even pausing or thinking. Finally I learned to slow the wheel down, step off, and get onto the path of recovery.
Eight steps toward recovery
We have taken the principles of the four noble truths and expanded them to help with recovery from addiction. The first three steps relate closely to the first three noble truths. All eight steps together make a path that leads away from the suffering of addiction, which is equivalent to the fourth noble truth – the path leading from suffering to freedom. These are the eight steps:
Step One: accepting that this human life will bring suffering
Step Two: seeing how we create extra suffering in our lives
Step Three: embracing impermanence to show us that our suffering can end
Step Four: being willing to step onto the path of recovery and discover freedom
Step Five: transforming our speech, actions, and livelihood
Step Six: placing positive values at the center of our lives
Step Seven: making every effort to stay on the path of recovery
Step Eight: helping others by sharing the benefits we have gained
The first three steps involve paying close attention to our experience – to our thoughts, feelings, and emotions – and to our bodily sensations. We can think of this as a voyage of discovery, as we explore in moment-by-moment detail how our minds and hearts work.
Paying deliberate attention to the fine detail of our experience, as it unfolds in the present, is called mindfulness. We try to inquire into exactly what is happening with an attitude of friendliness and curiosity. We try to stay open to whatever we might find, not making assumptions about what our experience is like. Often we hold on to an idea of our experience – for example: “This pain is unbearable” – which, when we face it calmly, may turn out to be quite different. Through mindfulness we begin to see and experience the nature of our suffering and how we cause ourselves more suffering, especially through addiction. We also start to see the possibility of letting go of some of our suffering.
Having a clearer understanding of how our minds work, in the fourth step we introduce kindness – one of the qualities of mindfulness – more fully. We aim to bring more kindness to our experience so that we can explore the pros and cons of both addictive behavior and life without addiction. The purpose of this step is to help us boost our decision to let go of addiction. With a clear intention to overcome our addiction, we will need to come to terms with our past actions and transform our current bodily actions, our speech, and our livelihood in ways that promote our happiness – this is the fifth step.
The sixth step looks at what values can help us stay oriented toward recovery. We speak of this as a “positive refuge.” We begin to explore what will take the place of the addiction(s) that our lives have been centered around. We ask ourselves: “What healthier alternatives could we put at the center of our lives?” This is hard, because it may mean letting go of people who have journeyed with us up until this point. If we want to stay on the path of recovery or return to it when we have a slip, we will need to make some effort. We explore the sort of effort that is helpful to recovery in the seventh step.
Finally, in the eighth step, we are concerned with helping others. We share open-handedly with others what we have learned or gained. As well as benefiting others, this consolidates our own recovery.
Who is this book for?
These eight steps are aimed at anyone who is struggling with an addiction or compulsive behavior. As well as those with drug, alcohol, and gambling addictions, the book is for people who experience compulsive or addictive aspects to eating, sex, or other behaviors. Although we recognize that recovering from addiction can be a matter of life or death for some people, this book is also for people who do not think of themselves as having an addiction, but who have habits that are harmful in their lives. We hope the book will be of value to professionals working in the field of addiction, as well as to those caring for someone with an addiction, or in relationship with a person struggling with addiction.
We can’t avoid suffering if we open our eyes to it. Suffering is all around us. However, freedom from suffering is in front of our eyes too. Some of us, who realize our difficult human predicament, reach a crisis and turn to a spiritual path, faith, or religion to deal with the shock. Others turn to an addiction to find meaning in life. Fortunately, addiction itself and the suffering it causes can lead people through the doors of a Buddhist temple, a church, a mosque, a synagogue, and many other places that offer some type of solace.
Sometimes, though, our suffering can seem too overwhelming, or the possibility of freedom from it can be so painfully close that we refuse to see it. We may know there are places we can go for help, but we choose to stay in our suffering. Many people caught up in addiction are afraid of recovery. They are afraid of the institutions that could help them.
One such organization that has helped people with addiction has been the twelve-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, and many other programs in this fellowship. It has saved many lives, helped many families, and outlined twelve steps and twelve traditions to the path of freedom. If the steps are followed diligently, there are twelve promises ranging from having a new freedom and happiness, to having no fear of people or fear of financial insecurity. However, twelve-step programs are not for everyone, and some have turned away, desperate for another way of recovery.
These eight steps can be used by people who have not responded to the twelve-step approach, as well as by those who are in twelve-step recovery. For example, they can also be used by people in a twelve-step program who are perhaps trying to understand their eleventh step more fully. This step is: “[We] sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.”
In the twelve-step fellowship, God can be interpreted as the God of your understanding, “Good Orderly Direction,” or “Higher Power.” Although the Buddhist tradition has no place for God as a creator divinity as understood by the theistic traditions, there is nevertheless a clear and definite understanding of a suprapersonal dimension, an “other power,” in Buddhism. This dimension is available to every human being, and for those interested we are including the suprapersonal in the eight steps, providing the groundwork for people to readily connect with it, beginning with the breath. However, the eight steps can equally be practiced without reference to or belief in a higher power or suprapersonal dimension.
Our book draws on the teachings of the Buddha, but the steps can be used by someone from any religious or spiritual tradition or from none. In the spirit of the Buddha’s advice to some of his disciples, we encourage you to test out the teachings here in your own experience and utilize those you find helpful.
How to use this book
To be able to write a book and explain our eight steps, we need to put them in an order. The order has a certain logical structure that can be helpful to follow. While we recommend working through the book sequentially, we realize that, in the messiness of our everyday lives, some of us may prefer to move back and forth between different steps and stages. Depending on what is happening in our lives, the challenges and opportunities we are facing, and how inspired we are feeling, we may respond to and want to practice different steps. Moreover, we are likely to need to revisit different steps again and again as our understanding deepens and as we ourselves change.
In each step there are exercises to practice. It may seem like an exercise is breaking your flow, but we want you to slow down and reflect before moving on to the next idea. We also encourage you to pause after each step, and we introduce a three-minute breathing space (AGE) to help you do this.
The book can be used alongside other help, whether professional or peer. In particular, if you are dependent on a substance, it may be dangerous to stop taking it abruptly without some medication, so we recommend that you seek medical advice if this applies to you.
The book can be used in a facilitated or self-facilitating group context where each step can be discussed among those present.
Recovery can be hard and is often thought of as a lifelong journey. We would encourage you to seek out whatever you may find helps you – we offer the eight steps as aids and support to accompany you on your journey.
A great ally on the path of recovery is our breath. We carry our breath around with us all of the time. Connecting to our breath can help us to pause and slow down, which makes recovery possible. The breath underpins all eight steps. We will be learning to slow our lives down by working with our breath and short meditations in the book. In Tibet, the word for meditation is gom, which means “to become familiar with one’s self.” That is what this book will help us to do. Through short meditations, meditative exercises, and reflections, we will begin to understand the nature of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and mind. Using the breath is one of the most common ways to help us calm the mind. So let’s connect to the breath before we begin exploring the eight steps of recovery.
If meditation brings up anxiety, we have lots of other tools to help you slow down. The tools section at the end of the book has additional exercises, as well as further resources, such as led meditations that you can also find online.