Somatic Dimensions of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment: An Embodied Gestalt Approach

ABSTRACT This article offers an embodied extension of Clemmens's stages of recovery, providing detailed phenomenological descriptions of how addiction and recovery manifest somatically. Traditional cognitive–behavioral models often overlook the body's role in addiction, perpetuating the disconnection between physical sensation and emotional awareness. Using a Gestalt therapy perspective, this paper explores how addiction disrupts the organism's ability for embodied contact, both internally with one's own sensations and externally with the environment and others. The author describes how therapists can support recovery by focusing on physical patterns that define each developmental stage. The paper offers clinicians detailed somatic interventions tailored to the specific tasks and challenges of early, middle, and late stages of recovery, while considering how cultural context and relational history influence embodied experience. This embodied Gestalt approach provides a framework for understanding and treating substance use disorders that honors the body's role in both addiction and recovery.