With the recent death of Amy Winehouse at 27, the issue of addiction brims to it’s ugly surface. With no autopsy result in we can’t be sure, but with her past drug and alcohol abuse and history in and out of rehab, there aren’t many questions in our minds except for maybe, “What does this mean for me…or for my family member…or friends?” Do addictions take control of our lives and is it hopeless? With new thoughs in psychology, the answer is a resounding no.

According to Stanley H. Block, M.D., author and professor of psychiatry there are three common myths about addiction:

1. Cravings are your enemy.
2. You always make bad choices.
3. You are controlled by your addiction.

And the three realities are:

1. Your body and cravings are not your enemy
2. Your nature has the ability to make good choices.
3. Unifying your mind and body puts you in the driver’s seat.

In the past a lot of emphasis has been put on childhood factors, genetic factors, allergies or even that the addiction is a disease. New neuroscience findings point to an overactive network in the brain. They consider two networks when looking at these issues: the Default Network and the Executive Network.

When the Default Network (also called our Identity System or I-System) becomes overactive, your natural resources or your Executive Network aren’t able to deal with personal challenges or cravings that are considered addictions.

According to Dr. Block’s recent article in Psychology Today, “Here is how it works. Visualize a cue (e.g. pizza, chocolate, relaxing drink, video games, etc.) that activates your cravings. Now note your body tension and the swirling thoughts generated by the cue. These are the signs that your I-System is overactive, leading to a disruption of your brain’s Default Network. Staying in this overactive state, you’ll be driven to eat more pizza, eat too much chocolate, have a drink, take that pill, or OD on video games. The craving has become bigger than you, and you become your cravings”

The new thought behind quieting these cravings is called Mind-Body Bridging. According to many professionals in the substance abuse fields, it’s a way of decluttering the mind or taking emphasis off of the object you crave by focusing on externals around you at the time – the sounds you hear in the background, your vusual surroundings, how your body feels as your feet plant on the floor or as you sit in a chair. And then the mind slows down. 

They consider this a whole new therapeutic way of dealing with addiction that helps you relearn ways to connect the mind and the body and lessen the perceived power of these cravings. Addiction is not the only area that mind-body bridging has been applied to.  An article on Huffington Post by Deepak Chopra takes a look at the benefits and how American medicine is behind the times.  Says Chopra, “The field of mind-body medicine has reached the stage where we know a great deal about preventing disease through means far less toxic than prescription drugs. This knowledge isn’t being taken advantage of nearly as much as it should be. American medicine should be helping people build a mind-body bridge. The human body contains enormous wisdom, and we could be tapping into it.”

When it comes to addiction, our brain has become short circuited by these overactive thought patterns, and when we bridge the mind to the body it slows it down and we regain control over our actions. Mind-Body bridging has many proponents, continues Block, “It is a brain-based, clinically researched and proven medical model that gets results…it is currently used by hospitals, doctors and health practitioners, counselors, social workers and life coaches to promote health and healing in a variety of conditions.” 

What do you think? Does this sound like an effective approach to dealing with addiction?