This is not your average sobriety story. Matthew Hahn was a meth-addicted burglar who thought he’d just pulled off the heist of his life. Then he cracked open a safe
Matthew Hahn
May 27, 2025
This is not your average sobriety story. Matthew Hahn was a meth-addicted burglar who thought he’d just pulled off the heist of his life. Then he cracked open a safe
Pain, in its myriad forms, is often the entry point for practice. Tragedy and heartbreak, discontent and unease, something among these inspires us toward something different. The Buddhist path offers
Defensiveness often arises when identity is challenged – when information about ourselves and the world runs counter to the way we view them, hold them, and maybe even cling to
Matthew draws on experiences firefighting and in incarcerated Buddhist communities to explore what it means to feel safe in a sangha, despite external circumstances.
There was a time in my life when I actively felt aversion for entire people, for everything about them, and I felt justified in doing so.
There are individual skills related to mindfulness that can be strengthened by performing different drills. Bite-sized, skill-focused mindfulness drills.
This guided meditation establishes embodied mindfulness by first using external bodily sensations, then internal bodily sensations, and finally a combination of both.
How can the Buddhadharma be used as the framework for addiction recovery? And how does such a Dharmic approach differ from 12-step models?
Sometimes, a mind arises that tells us, “There has to be something more than this”, which can serve as inspiration to practice the Dharma. In the Zen tradition, this is
Though not practiced as often as other subjects, mindfulness of death (maranasati) is an important part of the Buddha’s teachings.
Join Jeannine Coulter and I as we discuss my addiction and recovery story. From meth monsters to sobriety, nighttime crime sprees to Buddhist meditation, and from Alcoholics Anonymous to Recovery
Whether we found the practice because of singular traumatic events or an ever-present sense of existential dread, a sense of urgency is what likely inspired us to practice in the
Two formerly incarcerated people talk about addiction, crime, prison, firefighting, recovery, Buddhism, and service.
The Buddha also teaches us that we can find refuge in a dangerous world. What does it mean to find safety despite the inevitability of danger? What are the conditions
Prison Mindfulness Summit: useful approaches to volunteering in prison, pitfalls that facilitators might encounter in incarcerated settings, and what makes for safe prison sanghas.
When the Buddha taught the four foundations of mindfulness, part of the way he instructed students to be mindful of the body was through the lens of the four elements: earth,
Matthew Hahn has been many things in his lifetime. A career criminal and drug addict, a selfless man of courage, a convict, a devout Buddhist, a recovered drug addict, and
This podcast with Sam Lamott was recorded almost two years ago, just before the pandemic. I’ve done a good number of interviews over the years, but this one was special.
From the BBC Outlook webpage: “Matthew Hahn used to burgle houses in the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for a drug habit. One fateful night in 2005 he stole
Join Matt Hahn for a conversation with Emma Barnett on BBC 5 Live.
Matt Hahn and Rachael O’Brien discuss addiction, crime, prison, and redemption.