This insidious process happens in all addictions, but it’s especially devastating in opioid use disorder (OUD). Over time, people struggling with OUD lose the ability to feel natural pleasure from everyday experiences. Smiles, sunsets, laughter, and love become muted, while cravings for opioids grow stronger. There is an inner emptiness, an empty hole inside. That emptiness drives individuals to seek higher and higher doses of the drug to preserve a dwindling sense of wellbeing, tightening the grip of dependence and pulling them deeper into a downward spiral. The result is a vicious cycle that makes recovery feel out of reach.

But the brain is not fixed. It can be rewired back toward health through mental training.. In a study my colleagues and I published in JAMA Psychiatry, we found that Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) can help restore the brain’s ability to savor healthy, natural rewards, leading to improved mood, greater attention to positive experiences, and significantly reduced opioid cravings.

What the Study Found

In our study, participants with OUD showed blunted brain responses when asked to savor images of naturally rewarding things like puppies, babies, or a beautiful sunset. This emotional “numbing” was directly linked to stronger opioid cravings.

Using EEG scans, we discovered that MORE therapy helped reverse this pattern. After training in mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring skills, participants showed stronger brain responses to positive stimuli. These changes were tied to lower cravings and improved emotional well-being.

In other words, MORE helped people retrain their brains to feel joy again, a critical step in breaking free from the cycle of addiction..

Why This Matters

As a scientist and clinician, I’ve seen how addiction doesn’t just hijack behavior, it fundamentally rewires the brain

Opioid addiction often begins with prescribed pain medication. Chronic pain affects more than 50 million Americans, and when opioids are misused, dependence can quickly spiral into addiction. As dependence grows, the brain’s reward system becomes hijacked, leaving people unable to feel pleasure without the drug.

MORE interrupts this downward spiral. By teaching people to regulate cravings, relieve pain, and savor natural rewards, MORE helps restore balance to the brain’s reward system.

What Is MORE?

MORE is an evidence-based therapy I’ve developed and tested over the past two decades. It integrates:

• • Mindfulness training to increase awareness and self-regulation of addictive habits and cravings

• • Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies to reframe negative thoughts and emotions

• • Positive psychology practices to rebuild the ability to savor joy, meaning, and connection

What sets MORE apart is that it is the only addiction therapy specifically designed to restore the brain’s ability to savor—to fully experience and enjoy healthy, everyday pleasures. While other treatments focus on reducing cravings, managing withdrawal, or changing thought patterns, none have been intentionally developed to rewire the brain’s reward system so that patients can once again feel joy from simple, meaningful experiences. This unique focus on rebuilding savoring makes MORE a powerful pathway to lasting recovery.

Savoring as “Weightlifting” for the Brain’s Reward System

I often describe savoring as a kind of mental weightlifting for the brain’s reward system. Just as lifting weights strengthens muscles over time, practicing savoring repeatedly strengthens the brain’s ability to respond to healthy, natural rewards. For people struggling with opioid addiction, this is critical—because the brain has been conditioned to prioritize the drug over everyday joys.

Through MORE, patients learn to intentionally focus on positive experiences, holding them in awareness and amplifying the feelings of gratitude, warmth, or joy they bring. Each time they practice savoring, it’s like adding another “rep” in retraining the brain’s reward circuitry. Over time, this repeated practice builds resilience, restores the capacity for pleasure, and helps shift motivation away from opioids and back toward meaningful life experiences.

Here’s how we can weave that powerful point into the blog draft. The best placement is right after the “Savoring as Weightlifting” section, since it builds directly on the idea of retraining the brain’s reward system:

Restoring the Brain Toward Health

One of the most striking findings from our study was that MORE didn’t just boost savoring responses in people with OUD, but it actually made their brain activity look more like the brains of people who had never struggled with opioid addiction in the first place. On EEG scans, participants who practiced MORE showed stronger responses to positive, naturally rewarding images, resembling the healthy brain patterns seen in individuals without OUD.

This means that MORE doesn’t simply manage symptoms, but it actually helps restore the brain’s reward system toward its natural state. By retraining the brain to respond to everyday joys, MORE gives people with OUD the chance to reclaim the ability to feel pleasure, connection, and meaning in life, core capacities that addiction had taken away.

The Evidence Behind MORE

MORE isn’t just promising—it’s proven.

16+ randomized clinical trials with over 2,000 participants have tested MORE.

• In a large trial published in JAMA Internal Medicine (2022), MORE reduced opioid misuse by 45% at 9 months—nearly tripling the effect of standard group therapy.

• MORE reduced chronic pain by 25%, with effects lasting at least 9 months.

• In a 2024 study in JAMA Psychiatry, adding MORE to standard medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD reduced drug relapse by 42%, dropout from addictions treatment by 59%, and days of drug use by 36% compared to standard MAT alone.

• A 2025 study in JAMA Psychiatry found that MORE reduced opioid craving by 50%.

• These results show that MORE is one of the most rigorously tested and effective therapies available for opioid addiction and chronic pain.

A Path Forward

Opioid addiction robs people of joy, but MORE helps them reclaim it. By rewiring the brain’s response to pleasure, MORE empowers individuals to break free from cravings, reduce pain, and rediscover meaning in life.

At the MORE Science Institute, our mission is to bring this therapy to communities nationwide. With support from healthcare organizations, policymakers, and the national opioid settlement, we aim to make MORE widely available to help alleviate the opioid crisis.

If you’re a therapist seeking effective tools for your clients, or a patient looking for a path to recovery, the MORE Science Institute is here to help.