Seven Days: A Mindfulness Course for Addiction Recovery

Addiction isn't really about the substance. It's about what happens inside you just before you reach for it — the feelings that become too much to sit with, and the relief of making them stop. Over time, this teaches you to leave your own body. Your mind fills with rules, worry and noise, while your body becomes somewhere you'd rather not be. The escape works, which is exactly why it's so hard to give up.

This seven-day course offers something different: not willpower, but capacity. Each day you'll do a twelve-minute guided meditation built around the three-step breathing space — a simple practice of noticing what's here, settling on the breath, and coming back into your body. Afterwards, a short worksheet helps you make sense of what you found. You'll also take three brief breathing spaces during the day, so the practice reaches ordinary life, not just the cushion. The seven days build on each other, moving gently from finding steady ground, through understanding your own patterns, to meeting what's difficult with kindness rather than escape.

Nothing here is taken away from you. You're not asked to stop anything, fix anything, or feel differently than you do. You're simply learning to stay — and as your ability to be with difficult feelings grows, the need to run from them begins to loosen. The course is taught by David Cornwell, who studied Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy at Oxford and has worked at leading rehabilitation centres. It's a beginning rather than a cure, and it works alongside whatever other support you have.