In this audio, Dr. Patricia Carrington discusses how meditating is often beneficial in curbing addiction to cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and other drugs, especially over time.
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This audio clip is excerpted from Dr. Patricia Carrington’s Complete Learn to Meditate Course
Another beneficial effect of meditation is that it tends to combat a number of addictions. Several research studies have shown that people who stay with meditation and are regular and their practice of it, tend to become much less dependent on such substances as ordinary cigarettes or alcohol, or on non-prescription drugs, such as marijuana, amphetamines, barbiturates, or the psychedelic drugs.
For many people, meditation apparently doesn’t have too much effect on cigarette smoking during the first year. But, those smokers who continue meditating for more than a year also find that very spontaneously without an act of will or effort, they’ll just forget to light up a cigarette or they’ll forget to buy a pack of cigarettes. They seem to have much less need to smoke and after about two or three years of meditating many people spontaneously stop smoking cigarettes altogether.
With other addictions, though, the results seem to come much more quickly. I’ve seen people cut down a troublesome over use of marijuana within several weeks after learning meditation. I’ve also seen the beginning of an alcohol addiction respond very quickly to meditation.
Obviously, meditation is sufficiently useful in many instances of addiction, so that it should probably be tried by anyone suffering from these problems.
