At 52, I quit drinking to see what it felt like, the final stage of a gradual cleanse that began with quitting cigarettes at 44. Next I gave up hard liquor, then marijuana, a habit I’d picked up as a teenager and continued to use daily during the COVID-19 lockdown. Rather than allowing the stress of the pandemic to accelerate my addiction, I used the lockdown as a catalyst for a cleanse.
This change to sobriety coincided with my deepening mindfulness practice. I first practiced mindfulness in my hard-partying 20s, long before I committed myself to anything so transformative. In my 40s, I began practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM) to address the depression that was leaving me feeling isolated. My TM practice gradually evolved into a Buddhist mindfulness therapy that gave me a philosophical foundation for breaking free from harmful habits that had been a part of my life for decades.
How did he do it? you may be wondering.
When solving a problem, reconsider its origin – the cause of the effect. How did this happen? I asked myself this question last summer, sitting in a bar in San Juan. And why would I quit after all these years? The answer to the “why” question came easier because I was ashamed of the deceptions I’d committed at the bottom of my drinking life, and the breakdown in values that should have led me to the truth sooner. Plus the expense and health effects. But finding the answer to “how” I got there required more thorough introspection.
As a teenager, I was exposed to a working-class culture that valued music, which inspired me to play trumpet in the orchestra and jazz band at my high school in the 1980s. Drug abuse was a rite of passage for those of us who came of age during the excesses of the 1970s and despair of the 1980s. At the time, much of the Bronx where I grew up was ravaged by fire, violent crime, and corruption. I first began drinking beer before jazz band performances as a weekend night ritual with my best friend and I in the local park.
My father gave me my first beer when I was eight years old, but it was years before I had a second sip of the drink that would distort my perception of reality. Raised by a heroin addict, I learned to set strict limits on the substances I was willing to try and experiment with, but that didn’t protect me from an addiction to drink, which to many is a symbol of masculinity. Macho men drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and even marijuana. That was the image I wanted to project, even as I became increasingly interested in Buddhism, which first sparked during a field trip to a temple in Chinatown at the age of seven.
Realizing I was queer during the HIV/AIDS epidemic added to my fears, as it seemed like every gay man I knew in the 1980s had died from the disease. Its dark ending coincided with the violence that led my mother to kick out my father in 1981, when I was just 10 years old, the dark beginning of a tumultuous decade that followed. At the time, I had so many issues to escape, including sexual secrets that began to drag me along like a curse, that I didn’t know where to start. With few other options, I moved to Oregon in 1988, at age 17, to live with my mother’s family.
In Portland’s underground music scene, I found my people. As a closeted musician, this newfound sense of community brought me comfort, even though the Gen-X punks I began to befriend there partied harder than anyone I knew back home. In my twenties, my weekend drinking spilled over into the rest of the week, as I experimented with club drugs like LSD, mushrooms, and ecstasy. Upon coming out, I immersed myself in gay subculture, where alcoholism predominated as a coping mechanism for the cruelty of a homophobic society.
In my 40s, as I got more serious about it, mindfulness meditation filled the space that nightlife had once occupied. Transcendental Meditation guided me to inner silence through the repetition of mantras that appealed to my musical imagination. Embarking on an inner search, I settled into the serenity that awaited beneath the rough surface of anxiety and depression. The feeling of euphoria was so profound that I practiced TM daily. It was only after I cut down on my drinking and practiced introspection that my true self was revealed to me. It was a gradual transition to befriending myself.
By embarking on an inner search, I settled into the serenity that awaited beneath the rough surface of anxiety and depression. The sense of well-being was so profound that I began practicing TM daily.
My first experience with a mindfulness-based practice was while taking David Nichtern’s Tibet House 100-hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training course during lockdown, at which point, in addition to TM, I was also experimenting with sound. MettaWhile there are many different meditation techniques, including conscious mindfulness, loving-kindness, and breath-based meditation, the practice of mindfulness resonated with me on an even deeper level. Taught in a Buddhist context, mindfulness training trains you to observe how thoughts, emotions, and perceptions arise and pass away. These “movements” of the mind can range from joy to anxiety. By viewing these “movements” as separate from the mind, you can practice generating skillful states of mind while discarding unhealthy ones. This is the key to self-transformation.
Mindfulness of Cravings: A Two-Step Practice
Disclaimer: I have not attended AA meetings or been in a recovery program. I have drunk heavily in the past, but have gradually grown out of those habits, which may have made it easier for me to quit. Nonetheless, I believe that mindfulness practices, in addition to traditional recovery programs, can be extremely beneficial for heavy drinkers and addicts.
The methods I share with you are not meant to replace the medical and therapeutic support you receive as part of your recovery. Abrupt abstinence from alcohol can have devastating effects on the health of certain drinkers. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but by learning how your mind works and using that insight to understand how cravings arise, you can reduce your suffering.
My daily practice is rooted in the Tibetan Nyingma and Kagyu Tantric teachings. These teachings provide a philosophical framework for transforming impurities (in this case, addictions) into enlightenment through subtle means. We turn trash into gold. For many of my students, this is easier said than done, but they offer an ancient system for managing the energy of craving through awareness and discipline. This is how you change.
first step: When a trigger or desire arises, observe it.
Disciplined mindfulness practice creates distance between “me” and my thoughts. I pay attention to thoughts that arise in the present moment, such as thoughts that trigger a craving for alcohol. By observing this cause-and-effect response, I learned to restrain myself whenever a trigger for a craving arises, such as when I walk into a room full of strangers where alcohol is available, or when I ask for a drink to deal with the awkwardness of a social situation that I don’t want to deal with.
Step 2: Redirect and transform the energy of desire.
Once observed, we can redirect that energy into another activity, such as running, power walking, deep breathing, or any other physical release that drains the momentum and emotions associated with our deep-rooted craving for pleasure. Rather than perpetuating the suffering that comes from giving in to our defilements, we redirect this movement into a meritorious activity. Through awareness and discipline, we transform the energy of desire from trash into gold.
Another ritual that has worked for me is the Nine Cleansing Breaths, a series of full inhalations in which you press down on the right nostril on the first three full exhalations, the left nostril on the middle exhalation, and neither nostril on the final three. The practice, which I learned from Dzogchen teacher and scholar Keith Dowman, involves infusing oxygen to relax the body, exhale, and increase awareness of the present moment.
Meditation helped me stop drinking by making me aware of what triggered my cravings for alcohol. The urge to get drunk was reduced by the practice of noticing that energy and redirecting it into skillful behavior. You can do the same with habits by tapping into present-moment awareness. Filling the space of addiction with a healthier alternative, such as mindfulness meditation, can be a promising path to sobriety.
