Alcoholism and the Power of Prayer

Psychoanalysis and its cognate therapies might not have provided much benefit, but they have offered a religious experience for unbelievers. For people suffering from anomie, belonging to a cult can feel like an improvement.

The most intelligent psychoanalysts have long since stopped even pretending that they could offer treatment or cure. They have embraced the fact that it only fulfilled its destiny when it became a cult, a pseudo-religion.

In brief, psychoanalysis is scientology for people with triple-digit IQs.

Of course, no one with any sense has ever claimed that psychoanalysis could treat addictions like alcoholism. The advent and the popularity of 12 Step programs ought to have signaled the fact, unambiguously.

As it happens, AA derives from evangelical Christianity, and it also offers something of a religious experience, a spiritual awakening. And yet, AA does not hide its religiosity. It invokes God and offers prayer at its meetings.

The question then is: which works better for alcoholism, a pseudo-religion or religion?

As it happens, someone tested the proposition and discovered, lo and behold, that for people who participate in AA meetings and who have followed the program, prayer does work to diminish cravings for alcohol.

The Daily Mail reports the story:

For long-term members of AA, praying helps to reduce alcohol cravings when confronted with a triggering situation.

This is according to a new study, which explored the brain physiology of recovering alcoholics who had been involved with the program for years.

Participants who recited AA prayers after viewing drinking-related images reported fewer alcohol cravings and displayed increased activity in the brain regions that control attention and emotion.

The study was conducted in New York at the NYU Medical Center. Since you want to know what happened, here it is:

Researchers recruited 20 long-term AA members to participate in the study.

These participants, who reported no alcohol cravings in the week before testing, were then placed in an MRI scanner and shown pictures of alcoholic drinks, or of people drinking.

Each person was shown the pictures two times.

In the first round, the participants were asked to read neutral material from a newspaper following the viewing.

In the second, they recited an AA prayer which promotes abstinence from alcohol.

Across the board, the research subjects all reported some degree of craving after viewing the images.

But, craving lessened after reciting an AA prayer.

‘Our findings suggest that the experience of AA over the years had left these members with an innate ability to use the AA experience – prayer in this case – to minimize the effect of alcohol triggers in producing craving,’ says senior author Marc Galanter, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU Langone.

‘Craving is diminished in long-term AA members compared to patients who have stopped drinking for some period of time but are more vulnerable to relapse.’

Naturally, the researchers studied the brain function of the group under an MRI:

With data from the MRI scans, the team was also able to detect physical responses in the brain.

The researchers observed changes in the prefrontal cortex, the region in the brain that controls attention, and in brain sites that control emotion and the ‘semantic reappraisal’ of emotion.

With data from the MRI scans, the team was also able to detect physical responses in the brain.

‘We wanted to determine what is going on in the brain in response to alcohol-craving triggers, such as passing by a bar or experiencing something upsetting, when long-term AA members are exposed to them,’ Dr. Galanter says.

The researchers observed changes in the prefrontal cortex, the region in the brain that controls attention, and in brain sites that control emotion and the ‘semantic reappraisal’ of emotion.

This addresses the different ways people understand situations based on their perspective, they explain.

‘The findings suggest that there appears to be an emotional response to alcohol triggers, but that it’s experienced and understood differently when someone has the protection of the AA experience,’ Galanter says.

Galanter has studied the role of spirituality in long-term AA members for a decade, and found that members experience a ‘spiritual awakening’ which marks the transition to a different attitude toward drinking.

Reductions in craving are associated with the amount of time that has passed since this transition.

Why does prayer work? The brain waves do not offer an answer. But, we can observe that prayer helped the test subjects take step back from their emotions and cravings, to submit them to judgment, to see them as someone else’s.

At the least, the prayer did not help them to fulfill the mindless mantra that defines so much psychotherapy today. It did not help them to get in touch with their feelings.