The short answer is yes. In my experience, meditation won't replace the 12 Steps, a sponsor, or treatment. But it can reach the part of recovery that nothing else touches.
I've been in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction for over 15 years. I also worked for several years in a treatment center in Texas, where I started the first morning meditations they had ever offered. I've taught meditation to everyone I've sponsored since. Here is what I've learned, both from my own sobriety and from watching others find theirs.
How Meditation First Found Me
My mother introduced me to meditation when I was about 10 years old. It was something she was into in the 1970s, and I thought it was silly. When she came home from a class, I'd tease her with a loud "Om."
The joke was on me. Decades later, at 50 and trying to recover from drug and alcohol addiction, I was eternally grateful to her.
Somewhere in the back of my addicted mind, one thing had stuck. When I did those classes with my mom, the voices in my head went quiet. Not forever, but for a while. My mind was still enough that I could hear myself think a single, clear thought.
The Moment One Clear Thought Changed Everything
For about 20 years, I mocked AA. I worked the Program my way, without prayer, meditation, a sponsor, the Steps, or asking for help. I got exactly what the Big Book says we'll get: "Half measures availed us nothing." I was a drunk with no choice but to drink, and no protection from my disease.
Then, in a hospital, I had an experience I can only describe as a visit from my Higher Power. Someone came to see me who put my situation in the starkest possible terms: keep drinking, and it would kill me. He told me to think about it.
Maybe it was a withdrawal hallucination. I can't say for sure. But the need to drink was lifted, and I still carry a reminder of that night with me wherever I go.
What does this have to do with meditation? Everything. "Think about it" only worked because my mother's meditation practice had taught me what a single, clear, uninterrupted thought felt like. Since then, I haven't had much bother with that choice.
Why the 12 Steps Weren't Enough on Their Own, for Me
The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous gave me sobriety. They gave me a firm base to stand on during those early months. For many people, that's sufficient, and it may be all they want or need.
For me, it wasn't. For years I had tried to fill a giant hole inside me with alcohol, drugs, money, sex, marriages, and everything else the outer world offered. That hole was too large to face without something higher.
A Higher Power? Of course. But prayer alone wasn't enough for me. I could pray until I was blue in the face and still feel a void between the little me down here and the big Higher Power way up there. I needed to feel that connection closer than my closest friend, closer even than my sponsor.
After several months of sobriety without meditation, I went back to my roots and the practices my mother had taught me. Something clicked almost instantly. That void began to fill with a light, a link, a two-way connection that changed my sobriety entirely.
I returned to my meditative studies and took classes. Over time, that thin thread of light became something I could rely on. I could ask, and receive:
- When I felt weak, I received inner strength.
- When I felt alone, I received the understanding that I am truly one with the Universe.
- When I had questions, I received answers.
It took time. Now I look back and wonder how I ever kept any sobriety without this real connection with my Higher Power, which I've come to call my Soul.
What Meditation Actually Does in Recovery
I can only speak from my own experience and from what I've seen in the people I've worked with. Here is what meditation has done that I rarely see mentioned in articles on this topic.
It Quiets the Noise
When I was drinking and using, there were a hundred voices in my head at once. They told me what to say, who to make fun of, and what shocking thing might come out of my mouth next. Meditation turns that crowd down to one clear voice. It's hard to make good choices when you can't hear yourself think.
It Eased My Cravings
In my early months, sitting in silence and communion with my Soul brought a peace that took away any conflict I had with the outer world. It completely relieved the cravings I might otherwise have had. If you're struggling with the emptiness that cravings try to fill, I wrote the Filling the Hole Within Recovery Meditation for exactly that.
It Brings the Big Book to Life
I started meditating long before I reached Step 11. I found I could read the Big Book and get nothing out of it. So I began reading a short segment, stopping, and becoming calm and clear with that one passage in mind. Then I would meditate and ponder it.
Afterward, I had some of the most fascinating and valuable conversations with my sponsor about the whole program and my life. If you'd like to try this with the Steps themselves, my 12 Step Meditation Series for Recovery offers a meditation for each one, and OK, I'm Sober. So?! focuses on Step 11.
One Story From the Treatment Center
Before I came to the treatment center in Texas, it had no real spiritual practices. I started with a simple morning meditation for all the clients: quiet the physical body, calm the emotions, and bring the mind to an alert focus.
Trey saw no use in it. He sighed in the middle of the silence, and once he even groaned. After a couple of days, I asked if he'd prefer to sit the meditations out.
"They don't have anything to do with me getting sober," he said.
"It's up to you," I told him.
The next morning he showed up, and he didn't sigh or groan. I let it go for a few days. By then we had moved from simply relaxing to contemplating a single thought. In group therapy, the clients had been talking about how dishonest we alcoholics are in the middle of our disease. So I had written a meditation called "Feeling to the Truth," built around two seed thoughts:
- I have eyes to see, and I see the truth.
- I see through the veils of illusion to the Truth, and the Truth will set me free.
I asked Trey what was up, since he'd been coming but hadn't said a word.
He told me he'd been listening to two of the women talk about how the seed thoughts made them see themselves differently. "I guess it made me think, too," he said. "I wasn't always real straight with people when I was drinking, but I hadn't thought about it. Not until now."
Trey kept coming back. After a couple of months, he asked me to sponsor him. We worked together for nearly six months, and he became very proficient at meditation. He even gave me input on meditations I'd written before they were recorded, and his influence is in several of the meditations I've shared online.
We still stay in touch. He has another sponsor where he lives now, and he still meditates every day. He recently suggested an idea for a new meditation, which I'm writing now.
If you'd like to work with honesty in your own recovery, the Truth Meditation for Addiction Recovery helps clear away the mental fog addiction creates.
Meditation Works Alongside the Program, Not Instead of It
I want to be clear: meditation is not a substitute for the 12 Steps, a sponsor, therapy, or treatment. It's what made all of those come alive for me.
At the treatment center, I heard again and again from both staff and clients about the benefits of meditation when it was practiced together with the 12 Steps. The same has been true for the people I've sponsored. I've had many thanks and not one complaint that they'd wasted their time. Some have even gone on to study these teachings on their own, beyond their sobriety.
I spent about 20 years trying to do this with half measures. Save yourself 19 of those years.
Walking Through Life Instead of Running Into It
Today I meditate every morning. If I skip it, or I'm hurried, bothered, or distracted, the rest of my day suffers.
Here's the simplest way I can put it. When I meditate, I walk through life. When I don't, I run into life all day long, and that's a hard way to live. It's my choice, and I don't miss a morning anymore.
How to Start If You're New to Meditation
You don't need experience, and you don't need to sit for an hour. The approach I used in those morning meditations at the treatment center works well for beginners:
- Quiet the physical body. Sit comfortably and let your body settle and relax.
- Calm the emotions. Breathe slowly and let whatever you're feeling soften.
- Bring the mind to an alert focus. Stay awake and present rather than drifting.
- Rest on a single thought. Once you're settled, hold one idea in mind, such as a short passage from the Big Book or a seed thought, and let it unfold.
I'd encourage you to make it a daily habit. For me, mornings work best. For guided support, you might begin with the Addiction Recovery Meditation by Margrit, created for beginners in recovery, or the short 5 Minute Reset with Ho'oponopono. You'll find all of our free recovery practices on the Addiction Recovery Meditations page.
From Emptiness to Peace
So, can meditation really help with addiction recovery? For me, it was the difference between staying sober and truly living.
I was a drunk alone in the world, and I believed the world was out to get me. Now I walk in peace, and I get to help others find their way from emptiness and despair to peace and fullness. I can't ask for more.
If you're struggling right now, please reach out for help. In the U.S., the SAMHSA National Helpline (1-800-662-4357) is free, confidential, and open 24/7. If you're in crisis or having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988.
