When included in addiction treatment and relapse prevention
programs, mindfulness and meditation strategies have been shown to
reduce anxiety and help to prevent relapse. But mindfulness and meditation are
separate practices and even within meditation, not all styles produce the same
results. Which is best?
“Anxiety is universal to the human condition, but addicts
experience it to an extreme because they have real problems. Meditation and
mindfulness practices can help an addict stop worrying about the past, stop
fussing about the future, and can help keep an addict from being caught up in
racing thoughts about things they can’t control,” says Constance Scharff, PhD,
Director of Addiction Research at Cliffside Malibu Treatment Center.
The more stress and anxiety your brain experiences, the more
prone you are to addiction. The same is true of trauma – people who have
experienced traumatic events are
more likely to abuse substances than people without trauma histories. It’s
these two challenges – stress and the influence of traumatic memories – that
meditation or mindfulness training are thought to heal in
people undergoing addiction treatment.
Scharff describes mindfulness as awareness of the present
moment. Within meditation practices, there are two major schools – concentrative meditation in which a
person focuses on a thought, a sound or on breathing, and nondirective meditation in which a person gently unfocuses his or
her mind and lets thoughts wander.
“What we’re learning is that these practices physically
change the way the brain works,” Scharff says.
For example, a new
study published in the journal Frontiers
in Human Neuroscience used fMRI imaging to look inside the brains of 14
experienced meditators. First, the researchers had people chant a sound while
focusing their minds on the meditation syllables. Then researchers had people
meditate again, but this time letting their minds wander. They also compared
both meditation strategies to rest.
The group from the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology found that unfocused meditation led to the most activation of brain
areas that deal with the processing of memories and emotions. In fact,
unfocused mediation far outperformed both focused meditation and rest in its
activation of these areas essential for stress reduction and the successful
processing of traumatic experiences.
The authors write that, “These techniques are
thought to facilitate mental processing of emotional experiences, thereby
contributing to wellness and stress management.”
Likewise, a
host of studies show long-term changes in brain structures due to
mindfulness and meditation practices, including increased gray matter density,
increased neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to create new synapses), increased
activation in brain areas that control attention, and even temperature changes
in the brain. New research at the UCLA Mindful
Awareness Research Center and elsewhere shows
these visible, physical changes are sculpted by the practice of meditation –
the more you meditate, the more your brain is changed.
“In addition to long-term changes in the mechanics of the
brain, at Cliffside we see another, more short-term benefit – we see addicts
making an effort to focus on the things that are happening right now and
there’s a calm from making that effort,” Scharff says.
Even outside the ways in which meditation changes the brain,
and outside the effects of mindfulness practice on focusing attention on the
present, the process of learning to the skill itself may provide a valuable
forum in which to practice self change.
“For me, the important part is learning to be
non-judgmental,” Scharff says. “A person may only go three seconds before a
thought intrudes, and that’s OK. It’s the process of accepting current
limitations and learning to fail safely without self-judgment that is beneficial.”
**
Richard Taite is founder and CEO of Cliffside Malibu, offering evidence-based, individualized addiction treatment based on the Stages of Change model. He is also co-author with Constance Scharff of the book Ending Addiction for Good.
