“A hallmark of any person I’ve ever treated with addiction is that they’re very rarely in the Now. They’re either regretting the past and all their mistakes and really ruminating on that and dreading that, or they’re dreading the future, or just wanting a fix,” Witkiewitz says. “So what we’re doing is actually training them to be in the moment again, and to be OK with the stress.”
By Katelyn Newman, US News, January 29, 2020
Joe Fox’s drug of choice is alcohol. And while he says he’s previously tried programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous to help him stop drinking, the 37-year-old Atlanta resident says it wasn’t until he tried a treatment option tied to the psychological practice of mindfulness that he was able to put the bottle down.
“Mindfulness was for me … for lack of a better term, the ticket to putting this behind me,” says Fox, who celebrated one year of sobriety on Jan. 7.
After a month of detoxifying and living in rehabilitation housing, Fox says he spent two months receiving outpatient services at Centered Recovery in the Atlanta area, spending weekday mornings at the treatment center and participating in its meditation class on Saturdays.
“It was the meditation I learned there that really got me sort of past anything I could be taught in a classroom,” says Fox, who continues to meditate daily.
