Mindfulness and Self-Acceptance
Drug-dependent individuals are often self-medicating co-occurring disorders and unresolved traumatic events from their past which have not been processed and integrated; in many cases they’re so deeply buried that you have no conscious daily awareness of them at all. Comorbid medical disorders present their own spectrum of issues which must addressed, often through a combination of therapy and if necessary, pharmacological approaches and medication.
People who have used drugs for any extended period of time are often physically and psychologically dependent upon the molecules in question, which serve to suppress their myriad issues and keep them at a manageable level. In short: you’re self-medicating.
Individuals who use drugs are an extremely marginalized and stigmatized strata of society. Due to the “war on drugs” and criminalizing a medical condition, many people find themselves in the situation of committing multiple felonies on a daily basis just to obtain the drugs they’re physically dependent upon, which serves to further alienate and disenfranchise people who are already full of self-hate, doubt, and denial.
Self-acceptance requires some higher level of self-awareness and stripping away the veils and lies that hide you from yourself, through the process of denial. People learn to behave and act in certain ways in order to gain acceptance from their family, friends, and society as a whole. Most drug-dependent individuals become very gifted at method acting, and showing the outside world what it needs to see at any given moment in time, while burying their true feelings and situation from everybody, including quite often, themselves.
Ibogaine treatment can, and often does, provide people with a perspective shift, wherein they’re able to see themselves as they really are. This level of understanding changes and fades away the further you move from the ibogaine experience itself, so it’s important to write down your thoughts, feelings, and insights, as they arise. You’re not writing this down for anybody but the future you, who may read the words weeks, months, or even years later, and regain some of the insight you’ve anchored down during moments of clarity. Self-acceptance isn’t about being perfect or liking everything about yourself, it just means learning to love, recognize, and accept yourself as a person. It’s not necessary to love everything about yourself, just recognize what is, accept it, and gradually let go of the behaviors and traits that you don’t want anymore, and replace them with positive manifestations of who you’d like to be.
Method-acting your way through life may be something that you learned as a coping mechanism, but it’s a useful skill which can be applied in a positive manner. Whatever positive traits, habits and patterns, you consider to be worthwhile and desirable, can be cultivated and learned. Just act as if, and become… it really is that simple. Act like the person you want to be, and gradually you change yourself… within a relatively short span of time, you are the person you want to see in the mirror, who embodies the qualities you’re cultivating. Thoughts are things.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a therapeutic practice that assists people in releasing fear, cravings, tension, anxiety and a plethora of negative emotions like shame, guilt and self-hate. Mindfulness amounts to accepting and being aware of the present moment and what you’re experiencing and feeling. To borrow a line from Ram Dass, Be Here Now. There is a growing body of evidence that practicing mindfulness to release stress and tension has a plethora of positive medical benefits and assists your body and mind in releasing negative emotions and living in the past, or worrying about the future, while letting all the positive things that are happening right now, barely imprint upon your headspace before fading away.
If you want to view “reality” from the perspective of quantum mechanics, time isn’t linear, there is no line moving from A to B to Z; everything is actually happening all at once. The illusion of time just provides some kind of coherent storyline that anchors the experiences of your life into the tapestry of time, but there isn’t actually anything there, except for RIGHT NOW. Practicing mindfulness and getting involved in even the most basic, simple and short mediation on a daily basis, can have tremendous impact on how you perceive yourself and live your life.
The Benefits of Meditation and Mindfulness include:
- Not worrying so much about the future.
- Not dragging regret about the past into your every waking moment.
- It assists you in healing by accepting and processing past trauma.
- It can provide a reduction in chronic pain.
- The way your mind works is improved and re-factored. Neuroplasticity is engaged and new neuronal growth occurs in response to the introduction of new paradigms and ways of thinking and processing what’s happening to you in the here and now.
- It allows you to form deeper connections with others and fix relationships which may be damaged or broken.
- Meditation assists you in overcoming self-destructive thoughts and patterns of behavior. Addiction may or may not be a “mysterious disease” but it definitely encompasses a series of maladaptive behaviors which can be changed through the application of will, based upon increased understanding and self-awareness, following a successful detox with ibogaine treatment.
- It increases your ability to deal with the stresses and problem of everyday life. Most people are not deliriously happy or thrilled about everything all the time. At the same time, most people don’t need to self-medicate away their malaise and ennui by shooting up heroin or smoking meth. There are other ways to deal with and process stress… all of these are just learned behaviors. If you’ve never learned them, that’s alright, just keep accumulating new tools that you find helpful for your unique situation. To borrow a cliche from the 12-steps, “take what you find useful, and leave the rest.”
- Nobody is perfect, and life is always going to be filled with issues that arise on a daily basis and which can be perceived as obstacles and overwhelming problems, or just lessons that you process as you move onward through your journey.
Everyone at Clear Sky Recovery wishes you all the best in 2017, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like more information about what ibogaine can do for you and how ibogaine treatment may fit into your unique situation and set of circumstances.
Namaste