Can Meditation Be Addictive? (Truth Revealed)

Can Meditation Be Addictive? (Truth Revealed)

Getting started with meditation and sustaining the practice over time is the hardest part for most beginners. But can the opposite be true? Can you meditate so much you become addicted to meditation? 

While meditation can be a habit that you’re drawn to, calling it an addiction would imply an inability to quit the practice. If you find yourself drawn to the practice, you’re ahead of most meditation practitioners, since most give up. 

If you’ve normalized meditation to the same degree you’ve normalized brushing your teeth, you’ve successfully learned to love the process, and any meditation you do onwards will be easier. In the beginning, it’s the opposite. 

The mind tries to keep you from meditating as it wants to engage in short-term feel-good activities that, at the end of the day, end up making you feel worse and guilty since, deep down, you know you should be doing something else, but don’t have the discipline to. 

Meditating despite not wanting to is a true test of inner strength that only gets stronger the more it is exercised. All that strength can be cultivated within by staying habitual. 

You Can Drop Meditation At Any Moment

Unlike other habits that may not be so good for you, with meditation, you can drop the practice at any moment. 

But your conscience may feel guilty for it. Personally, I’m not able to enjoy the things that would normally be recreational until I’m done with what I know I should be doing. 

It’s always gonna be at the back of my mind, but it’s a healthy reminder and a strong driving force in not giving in to short-term pleasures that don’t add any value to our lives. 

However, while meditation isn’t exactly addictive, it can mimic many of the qualities of other addictions, such as drinking or overeating

You may experience withdrawal symptoms, but generally, meditation is a habit you want to keep. Once you experience what meditation has to offer, it’s hard to revert back to the lifestyle where you missed that, because the gains you get from meditation aren’t qualities you want to give up on. 

Small Steps

If you’re used to jeopardizing any progress you’ve made, making the shift to getting into adopting a habit of constantly wanting to improve yourself, as in the case with meditation, may not be the easiest thing. 

Meditation allows you to know yourself as well as your limits, and even overcome your limits by revealing your truest self. As long as you are making progress, that’s what matters. 

But if you have a major problem present in your life that you want to turn around, you’ll want to do it piece by piece to make the process less intimidating and easier to complete. 

When something is broken down into smaller pieces everything becomes easier, and the same can be said about meditation. Starting with short ones is a great way to get your feet wet and gaining momentum over time. 

While meditation is more a habit than an addiction, it’s easy for even experienced meditators to fall off the treadmill and fall from scratch. 

Many tend to have a perfectionist all-or-nothing mentality, and once missed a day of meditation turns into another, and so on. We don’t notice it until we take a step back. 

Fortunately, meditation perpetuates the cycle of taking a step back and reexamining things, which, in turn, as long as we apply even the slightest portion of discipline, staying on track with meditation becomes easy. 

Simply, take a step back and understand that it’s not the end of the world if you missed a day. 

Don’t bring yourself down over it as almost no one meditates for the 365 days of the year. We simply aren’t perfect and it’s common to miss a day or two. 

Simply resume where you were at and you won’t break the cycle. One step at a time is enough to go from a beginner meditator to an advanced one, that is able to meditate for hours at a time

For the most part, it’s easy to meditate for short times. But it’s also easy not to do it. In fact, it happened to me after not staying on track with the practice. Not even meditators are immune to laziness

Overcoming Addictions With Meditation

Meditation strengthens your willpower. But that alone isn’t always enough to stop an addiction. 

If, however, it’s combined with the environment that favors leaving a certain addiction, the process becomes a  whole lot more effective. 

On the other hand, meditation has helped many recovering addicts with its soothing qualities as it can be the perfect way to cope. 

Addiction doesn’t have to be limited to substances, but sometimes, we can feel attached to someone or even addicted to someone, to the point where we rely on them for happiness, but even there, meditation can be a good response to breakups

Of course, none of the benefits happen overnight and may take months if not years. At times, the assistance of a professional is required, but meditation is one of the most prominent natural means by which someone can break free from their addiction. But an alternative to meditation for overcoming addictions is exercise

How quickly you recover from an addiction will depend on you, but the same can be said about the successful integration of meditation into your life. 

Fortunately, meditation is highly personalized so you can always use a certain meditation to overcome what you’re attached to. 

We’ve also talked about environments that can help, not only with adopting the meditation practice but overcoming an addiction. 

And what I mean by environment changing, is deliberately making your surroundings make a certain bad habit difficult. If it’s smoking, the equivalent to this would be throwing away the pack of cigarettes. 

If it’s alcohol, emptying the cans and bottles would be enough, as you’d be putting an extra hurdle and making the accessibility of those habits harder for you. 

If you repeat this with any negative trait, all you have left are habits that lead to your personal growth, such as meditating or working out.  

And thus, your mind is more likely to gravitate to these things over time, once it’s learned to live without the negative addictions. 

Changing your surroundings already does a lot, but if you amplify your willpower and discipline through meditation, it’s even better. 

Sometimes, meditation alone isn’t enough, even if it can be. But many times you’ll find out that meditation facilitates what brings you closer to your goals and purpose, as opposed to single-handedly being the road to an outcome. Of course, this depends on which goals you have. 

Rewarding Yourself For Progress

Progress doesn’t have to be dull. In fact, earlier I mentioned how I enjoyed recreational activities more once I had done what I knew I needed to do deep down. 

If you operate the same way, you can set a goal with meditation, and if you reach it, even if it’s a small one, reward yourself, so long as said reward you give yourself doesn’t defeat the purpose of the progress you’ve made with meditation. 

Maybe it’s biking or going on an adventure. You can redefine your new fun with meditation and replacing even one addiction with something that you know is beneficial deep down is already moving in the right direction. 

You can track your progress and reward yourself for reaching certain milestones. At that point, you no longer make the reward system so readily available for yourself, which takes away the fun. 

It’s like unlocking all the secrets in a game and being an overpowered character. At some point, it gets boring and repetitive. 

We need purpose and meditation can take us from being in a place of addiction to bringing purpose into our lives. Of course, everyone’s experience will be different but those who stick with meditation long enough can confirm this. 

If you could have anything at the tip of your fingertip without working for it, you’ll reach a point where you want to revert back. 

So in that sense, hardship can be a luxury at times. Meditation teaches us to embrace hardship and most of the entertaining activities things we do after meditation we will find more joyful, purposeful, and deliberate. 

Automating the reward system is often what’s to blame for people’s negative emotional states. It only makes us feel good for a certain period, only to revert back to the bad sensations. You can do this experiment yourself. 

You can compare how you feel after a day of doing something you genuinely want to do, that you know is good for you and that will lead to progress with doing something because it will make you feel good and listen to what makes your mind feel good. 

You’ll have first-hand experience in what makes you feel more fulfilled, and this pain alone can push you to pick up the practice of meditation or any routine that’s worth integrating into your daily life. Spoiler alert, you’ll find mindful rewards much more enjoyable and long-lasting than automated rewards.