Several reviewed studies also found promising effects of MBIs on a range of psychiatric outcomes, including depression and anxiety symptoms (e.g., [26, 35, 44]), psychological flexibility (e.g., [40]), posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and positive affect (e.g., [15]). With the high prevalence of SUD comorbid with other mental health conditions, positive results in populations with high levels of depression and anxiety symptoms, as well as decreases in psychiatric distress over MBIs, are encouraging. Through gaining awareness of substance use patterns, automaticity of use, and the extent to which they are self-medicating negative affect with substances, individuals can then use mindfulness skills to address their SUD symptoms.

Yet, to the extent that behavioral therapies target dysregulated neurocognitive processes underlying addiction, they may hold promise as effective treatments for persons suffering from addictive disorders. Although mindfulness meditation has been used in clinical settings as an adjunctive therapy for substance abuse for a long time, there has been a relative paucity of research addiction meditation in this field. When we ‘placed a call’ for papers focused on mindfulness based interventions targeting substance abuse, we were surprised by many submissions from multiple authors from a variety of clinical research settings around the world. Although this high turn-out has exceeded our expectations, it highlights a growing interest in this clinical and research area.

Mindfulness-based interventions for addiction

Relapse is common in substance use disorders (SUDs), even among treated individuals. The goal of this article was to systematically review the existing evidence on mindfulness meditation-based interventions (MM) for SUDs. In pharmacological research, it is imperative to examine dose–response relationships to identify the optimal therapeutic dose. Dose–response curves can help to identify the dose needed to achieve a satisfactory clinical outcome while minimizing the side-effect profile of the drug. Although MBIs delivered in clinical settings appear to have few adverse effects [79], the costs and time required to deliver complex behavioral treatments like MBIs necessitate dose–response considerations to identify the minimal therapeutic dose. Null effects of MBIs observed in Stage II or III clinical trials might very well be qualified by extent of mindfulness practice, and thus mindfulness practice engagement should be tested as a treatment outcome moderator.

• The wide variety of conditions treated, treatment protocols and outcome measures used was apparent on inspection, and made the pooling of data impossible.
• Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT) is a manualized, mindfulness-based approach that is designed to teach interoceptive skills for self-care [23].
• Another positive outcome we found was the beneficial effects that MBIs have on cue-reactivity and attentional bias [47, 48, 52].
• But such research effectively ended in the late 1960s, when these substances were banned in most countries.

You can repeat the mantra loudly or quietly, and the repetition allows you to focus on the environment around you.

Lengthens attention span

In the light of this, it was suggested that reducing high levels of smoking-specific experiential avoidance would decouple the urge to smoke from experience of internal distress [97]. In addition to reduce cigarette use, participants of a mindfulness training intervention exhibited a decreased association between craving and smoking [98]. Furthermore, participation in an intensive meditation class was related to significant decreases in avoidance of thoughts, which partially mediated the reduction in post-treatment alcohol use in an incarcerated population [99]. Comparing an online-based ACT intervention with a widely accessed smoking cessation website, ACT participants exhibited significantly larger cessation rates that were mediated by increase of acceptance of physical, cognitive, and emotional smoking cues [100]. It is appealing to assume that the preliminary positive results in MM studies are direct outcomes of MM interventions; however, such a hypothesis is premature. The theoretical framework behind MM as well as early indirect evidence supports the use of MM for SUDs (8,9,13,14) and suggests unique therapeutic properties of MM.

Clients are asked to pause the scenario just before visualizing engagement in substance use and are directed to instead observe the breath. This pause allows clients to detach from their feelings of craving and gives them the necessary space to investigate what is arising in them physically and emotionally. A secondary data analysis of two separate MBRP RCTs was conducted to examine if the finding of mindfulness mediating the effect of MBRP on craving replicates in a new sample of individuals who completed the same measures [36]. In one sample [55](Study 1), the effect of MBRP on psychological flexibility, craving, and mindfulness was small to medium (Cohen’s d ranged from 0.08 to 0.48) and much smaller in the other sample ([59] Study 2; Cohen’s d ranged from 0.03 to 0.21). In Study 1, participants had higher scores on these mindfulness measures at post-treatment relative to TAU, and the post-treatment latent mindfulness factor significantly mediated the associations between MBRP and craving.