Recovery

from the book, Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction

pg 20:  For recovery is a process. It is a process navigating between complacency on the one hand, and self-recrimination and despair on the other.

So when a slip does occur, it is important to maintain a compassionate attitude toward yourself, seeing yourself as in a learning process rather than doomed to failure. You are human, and this is the way human beings learn. By bringing mindfulness to the slip, and what triggered it, you can form a plan to deal with that kind of situation in the future.  

pg 21: This book primarily deals with people in the maintenance phase. That is, it will show you how to build a satisfying and meaningful life without addiction once you have quit.  After contemplating quitting an addiction, after the decision has been made and implemented, there remains this tedious business of living without the alcohol or other drug. This part deserves special attention. For if you can build a happy, fulfilling. meaningful life, relapse will be much less of an issue.

Mindfulness

from the book Mindful Recovery: A Spiritual Path to Healing from Addiction

pg 13/14: Mindfulness is a quality of openness, of present—moment awareness and acceptance. Mindfulness is experiencing this moment, this very one, the only one that exists. Mindful living is not living in the future or dwelling in the past.  It is also not about recriminations when you find yourself in the past or in the future.  Mindfulness is about getting in touch with your spiritual essence, your true nature.

Mindfulness allows you to be open to your pain so you can learn its lessons and get your life back into harmony, into Tao.

Because addicted people get caught in unawareness, using drugs rather than face what hurts, mindfulness provides a gentle way to begin to face the pain.

Mindfulness helps in two ways:

First, by being mindful, by being aware of the state of your body, emotions and environment, you receive clear signals concerning what is out of balance and what hurts

Mindfulness also helps by putting you back in touch with the simple pleasure of being alive.

Pg 15:

...you fail to live the actual moments of your life because you instead are always trying to get some other, better moment. You never live, but you are always planning to live.