A Meaning-Based Intervention for Addiction: Using Narrative Therapy and Mindfulness to Treat Alcohol Abuse

J.A. Hicks and C. Routledge (eds.), The Experience of Meaning in Life: Classical Perspectives, Emerging Themes, and Controversies, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6527-6_28, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 When the general public conjures up pictures of alcohol abuse or addiction, extreme images of men living on the street or of celebrities fallen from grace and on their way to the Betty Ford Clinic often come to mind. For many individuals, however, the toll that alcohol takes in their lives is much more subtle and gradual in its menace. Although their current diffi culties with alcohol may not have produced glaring problems with employment, law enforcement, and physical health, its impact on their relationships, self-concepts, and the efforts to fi nd meaning and purpose in life should not be underestimated. Since we have previously written about the struggle of individuals with chronic addiction to fi nd a sense of identity and meaning in recovery (Singer 1997 , 2001 , 2006 ), the focus in this chapter is on individuals who periodically abuse alcohol but have not yet defi ned themselves as full-blown “alcoholics.” Critical to this volume, and similar to our previous work on chronic addiction, we seek to examine how alcohol has been incorporated into problem drinkers’ ongoing sense of narrative identity and how – from a mindfulness perspective – an addiction to their own negative cognitions becomes a signifi cant impediment in these individuals’ ongoing struggles to achieve a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. By narrative identity (Bauer and McAdams 2004 ; King and Hicks 2006 ; McAdams and Pals 2006 ; Singer 2004 ), we mean the efforts that individuals engage in to fi nd coherence and continuity in their lives by crafting together narratives from experiences, recounting these stories internally and to others, and “...ultimately [applying] these stories to knowledge of self, others, and the world in general” (Singer 2004 , p. 438). Drawing on a case study of a highly successful professional woman in her Chapter 28 A Meaning-Based Intervention for Addiction: Using Narrative Therapy and Mindfulness to Treat Alcohol Abuse