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.
"A new way of thinking about addiction recovery...
"The Mindful Path to Addiction Recovery: a Practical Guide to Regaining Control over Your Life" explores the nature of addiction and the integration of mindfulness meditation into its treatment. Addiction is a means of managing painful or intolerable experience. It begins with something we all do--seek pleasure and avoid pain--and creates a cycle of suffering via disabling our capacities for maturity and clear thinking. Mindfulness can be a counter-force to addictive processes by bringing a balanced awareness to our experience as it unfolds in each moment. It is a skill and an attitude that allows us to see more clearly and make wiser choices.
The book blends clinical perspective, case examples and mindfulness exercises to illustrate the power of these deceptively simple practices to help us assume authority in our lives. It discusses the interrelationships of mindfulness with recovery, psychotherapy,and medication in the treatment of addiction and dual diagnosis. The book is for patients, families, clinicians and anyone interested to learn more about the application of mindfulness practice to our problematic habits.
"This is a book that deserves its place among the very best of addiction recovery guides--both for practitioners who want to expand their treatment options and for those seeking change." --Howard J. Shaffer, PhD, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School, and Director, Division on Addiction, Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate
"A very gentle, compassionate, sensible, believable, readable, encouraging, and incredibly helpful book about overcoming a very powerful affliction. It is, in its broad thoroughness, a wise support for facing any major challenge." -- Sylvia Boorstein, author of Happiness Is an Inside Job
"A mindful and compassionate attention is the very ground of recovery from addiction. In this book, Lawrence Peltz offers a penetrating understanding of the nature of addiction, and the meditation practices that can help us find freedom from this suffering. Drawing on his rich clinical experience, Dr. Peltz shares the struggles of people who have found great healing on this path of recovery and transformation." -- Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
Email Contact: LaPeltz52@gmail.com
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