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Aidyn Fitzpatrick

The more cocaine you do, the more brazen you become.
At the height of my addiction in 2010s Hong Kong, I was getting through several bags a week. It took a completely unexpected, almost accidental pivot towards meditation to change the course of my life.
I remember a business dinner with my boss and my boss’ boss, visiting from New York. We were in a private room at an exclusive Hong Kong club, but I touched none of the exquisite food.
Instead, I slipped to the bathroom every 30 to 40 minutes, snorted a line of cocaine, then returned to the table and ordered another martini, gesturing for whatever food was in front of me to be cleared.
My bosses must have known what was happening. They had not reached the top of their professions by missing cues.
For some reason, they gave me a pass that night – maybe because I was what people call high-functioning: professionally reliable, socially decorous, apparently in control. I could still hit intimidating deadlines and help raise a family.
The comedowns, however, became awful, leaving me feeling sordid and exhausted. I started meditating – not because I wanted to quit, but as a tiny lifestyle add-on: a few minutes, once a week, to see whether I could feel less bad.
It ended up changing the course of my life.
The change, when it came, was quiet.
Aidyn Fitzpatrick
What began as a weekly meditation became twice-weekly, then three times, and eventually daily.
Sessions grew longer. They gave me a way to sit still long enough to notice what I was trying to outrun: feelings of inferiority, anxiety and childhood trauma. Meditation did not fix any of this. It simply interrupted the reflex to numb it.
The change, when it came, was quiet. I eventually flushed away my drugs, but not in a hallelujah moment. I did it with trepidation, even as I knew it was necessary. Perhaps that made it more convincing. The more time I spent being in my body without wanting to flee it, the less capable I became of deliberate self-harm.
This was not something I wanted to admit: I wanted to carry on being a rock star, even though it cost me a fortune and could have cost me my life. But as I entered my 52nd year, I quit drugs and alcohol and became a vegan for good measure.
I am now 60, still sober, still plant-based and still a daily meditator.
Paths to recovery
One reason meditation mattered is that it offered a ridiculously low-pressure way to begin. It did not ask me to become a different person overnight or march me into rehab. It asked only that I sit for a few minutes and notice what was happening.
“When people start paying close attention to their mind and body in the moment,” says Karson Wong Ka-shun, a Hong Kong instructor in mindfulness-based stress reduction, “they begin to notice and experience what’s really happening right now, instead of getting caught up in the stories like worries about the future or regrets about the past. This is the space of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’ or fixing.”

That can mean everything in addiction, where the interval between feeling and using is vanishingly small. At the same time, research details that mindfulness is not a magic bullet.
A 2021 review of mindfulness interventions found they can reduce the number of days with substance use, but evidence is less certain for abstinence rates or craving intensity.
Dr Ricky Tung Chi-kwong, an addiction psychiatrist and head of the alcohol and drug dependence unit at Castle Peak Hospital in Hong Kong, says mindfulness can be useful as part of broader treatment – one of several tools that may help some people stay with discomfort long enough to make a different choice.
It can become risky when used as a substitute for professional care in more severe cases, though.
Stimulant addiction fundamentally rewires the brain, he says, often triggering severe mood swings, chaotic decision-making and deep-seated mental health struggles.
“Input from mental health professionals would be required for safe and effective management of these issues,” Tung says.

The lie of the high‑functioning professional
My years as a user coincided with – indeed were partly the result of – the flood of cocaine that began to inundate Hong Kong in the 2010s. It went from exotic luxury to essential condiment.
The problem has only got worse. In 2023, government figures showed cocaine overtaking cannabis as the drug of choice among young substance abusers, and most of Hong Kong’s 3,406 drug-related arrests that year involved it.
Officials have responded by stepping up education about its harms and the Security Bureau’s narcotics division lists more than 30 rehabilitation services run by government departments and NGOs.
For those who cannot see themselves darkening the doors of a public hospital or halfway house in the New Territories, or who need treatment in English, there are also private options, including residential rehabs in Thailand such as The Dawn in Chiang Mai, which sees “a steady stream” of Hong Kong clients and positions itself as serving high-pressure professionals.
Helen Wells, The Dawn’s clinical director, says treatment for cocaine addiction at the facility might include psychotherapy, yoga and “somatic or body-based approaches that help reconnect people with physical and emotional awareness”.
The key is that these are “interconnected parts of the recovery process that support one another”, she explains, helping clients move from automatic reacting to what she calls “more self-aware, intentional, emotionally regulated” ways of coping.
That distinction matters because one of the most powerful protections around a drug habit is the ability to keep functioning. You excel at work, turn up to every school event and point to everything that has not yet fallen apart as proof that nothing is wrong.

Tung says professionals “often maintain steady employment through compartmentalisation of their substance use and overcompensation at work,” only coming into contact with the healthcare system through secondary problems such as insomnia or depression.
Dr Frances Cheng, head of mental health at medical practice OT&P, notes that many outwardly high-functioning professionals in Hong Kong carry anxiety, depression, relationship strain and financial stress beneath the surface.
“The pressures of the complexities of work, difficult workmates, workplace politics, heavy workloads, long hours, made much worse with international calls and job insecurity, all contribute to stress, fatigue and burnout,” she says.
She agrees that mindfulness and meditation are accessible interventions, but emphasises that a doctor should also be consulted.
“It doesn’t have to be a psychiatrist,” she says. “You can go and speak with your GP, and they should be able to assess you for anxiety or depression.”

Watching and noticing
Wong, the mindfulness teacher, is careful not to sugarcoat the practice. Mindfulness makes the body’s honest feedback harder to ignore, “by really tasting and feeling the effects of the substance or behaviours”, whether that is the agitation that precedes a binge or the self-loathing that follows it. Change begins with noticing.
That rings true to me. The most surprising thing meditation gave me was not serenity. It simply made evasion less available. Once you have sat and watched a craving rise, peak and pass, the old story that you must obey every urge begins to fade.
This is not an argument against treatment. Quite the opposite. For some people, especially those with severe dependence, mental health complications or unsafe withdrawal, meditation will never be enough. The point is simply that change does not always begin where people imagine it will.
For readers stuck in some private loop of self-harm – cocaine, drinking, smoking – the most useful idea may be to start small.

Wong suggests a “low-dose” mindfulness practice: sit for one to three minutes, notice the breath and the body, and name how you actually feel without trying to fix it.
It sounds absurdly minor. But then, so were the first few minutes that helped me begin building a life in which I no longer needed to disappear from myself.
To seek help for a drug addiction, see this list from the Security Bureau’s narcotics division.
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While not a cure-all for addiction, meditation offered this Hong Kong writer a low-pressure path to recovery and self-awareness


While not a cure-all for addiction, meditation offered this Hong Kong writer a low-pressure path to recovery and self-awareness.


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She had a cocaine addiction. How meditation helped her quit and regain control of her life

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While not a cure-all for addiction, meditation offered this Hong Kong writer a low-pressure path to recovery and self-awareness

While not a cure-all for addiction, meditation offered this Hong Kong writer a low-pressure path to recovery and self-awareness