For therapists working at the intersection of addiction, emotional distress, and chronic pain, the need for effective, evidence-based interventions has never been more urgent. More than 9 million Americans misuse opioids, and many are cycling through treatments that fail to address the neurobiological roots of craving and loss of control.

A groundbreaking study, the largest neuroscience investigation to date on mindfulness as a treatment for addiction, offers a powerful new direction. Published in Science Advances, this research shows that Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) can reduce opioid misuse by changing the brain’s activity in ways that restore self-regulation and interrupt automatic addictive habits.

This is not mindfulness as a wellness trend. This is mindfulness as a measurable, neurobiologically active treatment. Mindfulness changes the brain to relieve addiction.

Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement Amplified Frontal Midline Theta EEG Power During Meditation

Why Theta Waves Matter for Addiction Treatment

The study focuses on frontal midline theta waves, a brain rhythm associated with focused attention, present-moment awareness, and the ability to disengage from automatic, habitual thoughts.

Low theta activity is linked to:

• Mind-wandering

• Rumination

• Difficulty concentrating

• Slipping into automatic, cue-driven behaviors—including drug use

In contrast, high frontal midline theta reflects a state of deep mental concentration and absorption. With high theta activity, the mind becomes very quiet and deeply absorbed—you lose yourself in what you are doing. This shift is not just psychological, it is neurophysiological.

The new study shows that MORE reliably increases this theta activity, and that these increases help patients regain control over addictive impulses.

Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Neuroscience

What’s remarkable is how closely these findings mirror insights preserved for thousands of years across contemplative traditions. Long before EEG machines existed, ancient meditative systems taught that quieting the mind could loosen the grip of desire, craving, and compulsive behavior. Contemplative lineages from spiritual traditions around the world described a state in which the restless, self-focused mind settles, giving rise to clarity, equanimity, and a sense of connection beyond the individual self.

In this state, a person experiences deep contentment and fulfillment. Nothing feels missing, there is no sense of lack, and the endless search for “something more” naturally falls away. One taps into an inner wellspring of wellbeing that is stable, replenishing, and self-sustaining.

Modern neuroscience is now validating what these spiritual traditions intuited: when the mind becomes still and attention gathers in the present moment, frontal midline theta increases, the sense of “I, me, mine” softens, and cravings lose their urgency.

In this way, MORE bridges ancient contemplative wisdom with contemporary clinical science. By guiding clients into this quiet, absorbed state through unique mindfulness techniques, MORE enables them access to the same self-transcendent experiences long used in contemplative traditions to loosen attachment and desire. In MORE this approach is completely demystified and instead delivered through a structured, evidence-based therapeutic protocol accessible to clients from any background.

Theta, the Default Mode Network, and the Addicted Self

To understand why these shifts matter for addiction treatment, it’s essential to consider the role of the default mode network (DMN)—the brain system involved in self-referential thinking, autobiographical memory, and the ongoing narrative of “me.”

The DMN is where the habitual sense of self is constructed. It is also where:

• Desire is generated

• Craving loops are reinforced

• Rumination and self-judgment take hold

• The mind rehearses old stories of pain, shame, and unmet needs

In addiction, the DMN becomes hyperactive and dysregulated, locking individuals into rigid patterns of self-focus, longing, and automatic seeking. This overactive DMN fuels the very sense of lack that drives substance use.

Here’s where theta becomes transformative.

Frontal midline theta is essentially the inverse of DMN activation.

When theta rises, DMN activity naturally decreases.

When the DMN quiets, the habitual “addicted self” loosens its grip.

Mindfulness meditation—especially as taught in MORE—evokes this theta-dominant state, disrupting the DMN’s repetitive loops. In brand new (soon to be published) neuroimaging data collected with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), my colleagues at Mt. Sinai Hospital found that MORE actually decreases craving-related activity in the DMN. As the DMN settles, clients experience:

• A quieting of self-referential thinking

• Relief from craving and compulsive seeking

• A sense of spaciousness and presence

• Moments of self-transcendence, interconnectedness, and fulfillment

This is why participants in the study who showed the largest increases in theta also reported the most profound experiences of oneness, bliss, and connection—and why they showed the greatest reductions in opioid misuse.

Mindfulness interrupts the neurobiological machinery of craving at its source.

Inside the Study: What Therapists Should Know

We recruited 165 adults with opioid misuse and randomly assigned them to:

• MORE, an eight-week mindfulness-based therapy integrating mindfulness, reappraisal, and savoring

• Standard group psychotherapy involving expressing and processing thoughts and emotions

Participants completed EEG recordings before and after treatment while practicing mindfulness meditation. They were then followed for nine months to assess opioid misuse.

MORE participants were trained to:

• Sustain attention on breath and body sensations

• Notice mind-wandering into drug-related or stress-related rumination

• Redirect attention with awareness and compassion

• Access moments of positive emotion and meaning

This is mindfulness not as relaxation, but as attentional retraining.

Key Findings: Mindfulness Reshapes the Addicted Brain

1. MORE more than doubled frontal midline theta activity

Supportive therapy produced no change. MORE produced robust increases in theta power—evidence of strengthened attentional control and reduced automaticity.

2. Theta increases predicted self-transcendent experiences

Participants with the largest theta gains reported:

• Quieting of self-referential thinking

• A sense of oneness or connection

• Blissful energy or love

3. Theta increases mediated reductions in opioid misuse

Participants who showed the biggest theta increases showed the greatest reductions in opioid misuse across nine months.

4. MORE produced clinically significant, lasting behavior change

These findings build on prior clinical trials showing that MORE:

• Reduces opioid misuse by 45%

• Nearly triples the effect of standard therapy

• Improves pain, emotional distress, and craving regulation

This new neuroscience study helps explain why.

Why This Matters for Your Clinical Practice

Therapists often see clients trapped in cycles of craving, shame, and automatic behavior. MORE offers a structured, evidence-based way to interrupt those cycles by strengthening the brain’s capacity for self-regulation. But the implications go deeper than behavior change.

Over time, suffering can fuse with identity. For instance, when someone repeats the phrase “I am in pain” often enough, the preposition eventually disappears—“I am pain.” The sense of self becomes organized around suffering. We become attached to and defined by a pain-laden identity.

The same process occurs with addiction. Clients may come to feel marked by their addictive behavior, as if the shame of relapse or craving has contaminated their very nature. They begin to believe they are broken, flawed, or fundamentally damaged.

Mindfulness interrupts this identity-fusion.

By quieting the mind and loosening the grip of the default mode network, mindfulness helps clients step back from these rigid self-stories. MORE teaches them to observe pain, craving, and emotion as passing experiences—not as who they are. This opens the door to self-transcendence, allowing clients to experience themselves as deeply interconnected with something larger than their limited, suffering-based identity.

In this spacious state, clients can reconnect with what contemplative traditions call basic goodness—a fundamental sense of worthiness and wholeness beneath the layers of pain and addiction. As Chögyam Trungpa wrote, “Every human being has a basic nature of goodness, which is undiluted and unconfused… we have an actual connection to reality that can wake us up and make us feel basically, fundamentally good.”

MORE helps clients rediscover this innate goodness.

By shifting out of default-mode rumination and into theta-supported presence, clients experience natural, healthy pleasure; a renewed sense of meaning; and a deeper connection to life that reduces the need to self-medicate.

A New Pathway for Addiction Treatment

Across cultures and centuries, humans have used meditation, prayer, and spiritual practices to access states of self-transcendence. This study shows that such states are not mystical—they are measurable, reproducible, and therapeutically potent.

For therapists, this means:

• You can offer clients a safe, accessible, neuroscience-supported intervention

• You can help clients experience relief without exposure-based trauma work or pharmacological risk

• You can integrate MORE skills into your sessions to strengthen emotion regulation and reduce relapse.

The MORE Science Institute is committed to training clinicians in these methods so they can bring this evidence-based therapy to the people who need it most.