Ananda Forest – Healing Addiction: 21st Century Leprosy

In stories of Jesus and St. Francis, we hear of leprosy and how it was miraculously healed. Today, we don’t fear leprosy. It is easily treated with antibiotics. The “leprosy” we face is addiction in all its myriad forms. Addicts are often treated “like lepers” and although we can’t “catch” it, the behavior of addicts poisons the environment around them. In this talk, I share my own journey through addiction and how I received miraculous healing from Amma.
Ananda Forest has followed many paths in his 64 years. He graduated from Yale Law School, taught English at a progressive private school in Brooklyn, worked as a carpenter and mechanic in upstate New York, and co-founded a shamanic teaching center in Vermont. Until recently, he lived in Brattleboro, Vermont and divided his time between teaching anthropology and history at the local community college and pouring water in sweat lodge and singing kirtan. He studied shamanism for ten years and later became a devotee of Neem Karoli Baba and Amma. Ananda has been involved with twelve step programs for over 25 years and his journey in recovery directly informs his spiritual path. He is the author of Here for the Joy: A Memoir of Survival, Addiction Recovery, Spiritual Enlightenment and In-Depth Personal Transformation. He and his wife, iishana, are just returning from a round the world yatra (pilgrimage) to Amritapuri in India and the island of Bali, and they plan to settle in the Santa Fe area.