Introduction to Mindfulness - Dean Amory

Summary and recommendations
This 8-week course was an exploration of the value of mindfulness
training to the complex process of recovering from an addiction and
staying “clean”. It was never presented as a grand solution to the
problem of addiction, but as an adjunct to a range of therapies and
programs from which the participants had already benefited.
Meditation of any kind is not an easy subject to explain. The
experience of practice, rather than any number of explanations or
descriptions is what allows an individual to grasp for themselves what
it means.
As a result those who have limited or no experience of meditation
often hold many misconceptions about it. Thirteen adults began the
course and seven were still there at the final meeting. Of those who
dropped out early on, we know that some of them found returning to
the drug service for a weekly course was itself upsetting as they
preferred to think they had left all that behind them. Two reported
that they found it hard to be in a room “full of addicts” after being
successfully clean for a long time. These are issues that we would
anticipate and address more rigorously in any future selection process.
It may be that if an individual has successfully stayed clean away from
the ethos of a drug counselling service, then their introduction to
mindfulness training should be in some very neutral location where
there is no special focus on addiction.
Of those who completed the course, all reported that they found it
that mindfulness made sense to them, and that it had strengthened
them in their recovery.
Only one individual reported that he still didn’t “get mindfulness” by
the end of the course.
Due to constraints in the design and sample size of the quantitative
study, we cannot draw any firm conclusions on the benefits of
applying mindfulness to relapse prevention. However, the results
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