Augie

A couple weeks ago, 9 1/2 months into recovery, I sat down at a table in a Japanese restaurant to await a dinner companion. I was in a great mood...excited about eating sushi, excited about spending time with my friend and going to the movies, excited that it was a Friday night. I opened the menu and immediately my eyes latched onto "hot sake". Wham -- there I was hit with my first craving since cleaning up. I was consumed with WANT and got lost briefly in a little fantasy, watching it happen -- euphoric recall and all. It caught me really off-guard and my immediate reaction was fear. A WTF-where-did-this-come-from? kind of fear.

I babbled here a few months back about taking to mindfulness. Learning to disidentify with thoughts, feelings, sensations -- watch them come, maybe hang out for a while, then be on their way. Bringing it to bear on depression, anxiety, anger, reactivity...learning not to let my mind have its way with me. I believed that it would be a great skill to have in the face of an urge to use and had hoped that if/when one did hit I'd be able to experience it with, as they say, "spacious awareness". Well, it wasn't immediate, as I wasn't at all in a mindful state when opening that menu, but before long it became clear that this craving was nothing special and nothing to fear. I saw it as "craving is happening" rather than "I am craving". Then I deconstructed it into a physical urge, a feeling of want, and a collection of thoughts, taking none of them personally, experiencing them non-judgmentally, even "pre-conceptually" (just stuff happening). Not getting hooked by it, and not pushing it away; just letting it be and staying present with it. Suddenly it seemed like anything else I've been learning to experience mindfully in recent months and it receded from the forefront of awareness, became just a subset of what was happening in that moment. Shortly the rest of the menu and the art on the walls became more interesting and my urge to drink vanished. I greeted my companion when she arrived and we had a lovely meal. We went to see My Week with Marilyn, which seemed to us a splendid flick.

Mindfulness rocks.

sober4metoday

I think my love affair with sushi began because of my love affair with sake. I knew every time I said, "Hey let's get sushi!" I was really craving the drink.

I'm newly sober and reading about these types of experiences helps me visualize what I crave today - a healthy and sober way of living.

zxcirce

The craving only has power if we give it power. It's a thought, something that happens in our bodies, nothing more--until we build it up, fight it, fear it.

Great post.

Jeans

I've had quite a lot of cravings and everytime I deal with it and resist alcohol I feel euphor.ic for a day or two afterwards. It's the best feeling in the world.

Think of it as a positive experience. Well done for staying sober

Zencat

Thanks for the share Augie.

Detaching from a craving thought then bringing my attention elsewhere like my surroundings takes the power away from the craving. Its liberating to experience my somewhat disciplined mind as my friend vs the wild mind of an active addict feeling powerless over my thoughts and actions.

Augie

You're right, it does require discipline. I guess all that time I've been spending in meditation might be regarded as training.

Curious to me that I don't see more on mindfulness/disidentification (and the particular types of meditation in which the skill is developed) applied to addiction. I guess in one sense there's nothing special about an urge to use, in that the mindful response need not differ from that for anxiety or anger or pain, so any of the vast literature on mindfulness would be relevant, but I'd think that seeing it applied would be encouraging to anyone looking for secular approaches to getting/staying clean. I can only find a couple books on the subject that aren't tied to the steps, with which mindfulness doesn't inherently have anything to do.

soberlicious

I agree, it's not the "thing", it's what we do with the "thing". They are all the same to me.

You just shared it in action, and indeed it is encouraging. Thanks for the powerful post.

freshstart57

Yay, Augie. What you described, and described so perfectly, is exactly what I am trying to do. Your post can serve as a manual for what I have heard called 'Urge Surfing'. I started my sobriety with the AVRT thing, dis-identifying with that urge, but I see now that mindfulness is SO much more powerful than just a tool for battling addiction. It has many many applications, and is becoming a big part of my life. I like it.