I’m very interested to see how this Mindfulness-based Relapse Prevention stuff will play out. While I’m sure, on a practical level, it’s possible to integrate mindfulness practice and principles into 12-Step programs and government-sanctioned treatment approaches, I also wonder if mindfulness-based approaches to addiction (and mental health issues in general) will prove to be fundamentally at odds with the disease model/brain disorder paradigm that rules the day.

From my point of view, the growing body of research showing the efficacy of mindfulness approaches to various “problems of living” demands a radical revisioning of addiction and psychiatry in general.

Speaking as a recovering addict (which certainly doesn’t make me an expert), I think the disease model is in need of revision. Or, if not, our traditional ideas about diseases need revising or expanding. On some level is all just seems like pointless semantics.

Addiction certainly raises interesting questions about behavior, and it’s roots and causes. Does our genetic inheritance and environmental past work in connection with some mysterious, inner psychological algorithm to influence our behavior? Quite likely. In this view, addiction and disease are labels given by culturally appointed experts to signify our behavior is out of bounds.

Perhaps addiction is best understood as a disease of free will. That’s how I experienced it at times. I FELT powerless. Whether I was or not is irrelevant in many ways. Leave it to philosophers and neuroscientists to decide.

Regardless of how you view it, whether you believe in the disease model, powerlessness, self-determination, or whatever… information is an “event”, and as such it has power. The power to affect changes.

So, maybe the knowledge of “mindfulness” will incline some of us to practice it, and maybe through the practice something will happen… that mysterious “algorithm” will shift slightly, and for the better. In this way mindfulness could essentially come to take the role, for some of us, of what the 12-steppers call a “higher power”.

Thank you all for your comments, this is a place for such rich discussion. I want to add one note here. A cure implies that there is some antidote to a problem that will rid of it forever. When suffering with addiction, cravings and urges may never completely go away forever. They may become less apparent, but they can still rear their heads. This is why so many people continue to find it beneficial to keep connected to community for support. Mindfulness can be thought of more as a way of healing as it’s an active and ongoing practice to support us in changing the way we relate to our stress and pain and therefore breaking the cycle of reactivity.

The disease model and the mindfulness model are not so different- the body is the ultimate chemical factory and the physiological mechanisms for influencing changes similar.

AMEN SISTER! That about sums it up to the fullest!

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