The Effectiveness of Mindfulness in the Treatment of Methamphetamine Addiction Symptoms: Does Neuroplasticity Play a Role?

Mindfulness meditation may reduce hunger, risk of relapse, stress, depression, and aggression in people with methamphetamine addiction, and can improve cognitive function, whether used alone or with transcranial direct current stimulation. A review of ten studies using behavioral measures found mindfulness an effective treatment option, potentially by inducing neuroplasticity. No drugs are approved for methamphetamine addiction, and existing treatments have moderate effectiveness, so mindfulness offers a promising avenue. However, the review calls for more high-quality research using neuroimaging and neurophysiological measures to confirm these findings and understand underlying mechanisms.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Methamphetamine is a highly stimulating psychoactive drug that causes life-threatening addictions and affects millions of people around the world. Its effects on the brain are complex and include disturbances in the neurotransmitter systems and neurotoxicity. There are several known treatment methods, but their effectiveness is moderate. It must be emphasised that no drugs have been approved for treatment. For this reason, there is an urgent need to develop new, effective, and safe treatments for methamphetamine. One of the potential treatments is mindfulness meditation. In recent years, this technique has been researched extensively in the context of many neurological and psychiatric disorders. This review explores the use of mindfulness in the treatment of methamphetamine addiction. Searches were conducted in the PubMed/Medline, Research Gate, and Cochrane databases. Ten studies were identified that used mindfulness-based interventions in the treatment of methamphetamine addiction. The results show that mindfulness is an effective form of reducing hunger, risk of relapses, stress indicators, depression, and aggression, alone or in combination with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Mindfulness also improved the cognitive function in addicts. The included studies used only behavioural measures. The potential mechanisms of mindfulness in addiction were explained, and it was proposed that it can induce neuroplasticity, alleviating the symptoms of addiction. Evidence from the studies suggest that mindfulness may be an effective treatment option for methamphetamine addiction, used alone or in combination with tDCS. However, further high-quality research is required to establish the role of this treatment option in this field. The use of neuroimaging and neurophysiological measures is fundamental to understand the mechanisms of mindfulness.