Healing Addiction, Stress, and Pain with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement: A New, Evidence-Based, Neuroscience-Informed Treatment Approach

Half of all people with a substance use disorder (SUD) have chronic pain, and more than a third have a co-occurring psychiatric disorder. The ongoing opioid crisis is a case in point, where physical and emotional pain fuel opioid addiction and continue to drive countless deaths of despair to this day. Unfortunately, there are few evidence-based therapies that can simultaneously treat this complex comorbidity. To meet this need, Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) was generated through a decade-long treatment development process funded by the National Institutes of Health. Rooted in affective neuroscience, MORE unites mindfulness training, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and principles from positive psychology into an integrative therapy designed to target addiction, stress, and pain.

This session will detail the theory underlying MORE, research data demonstrating MORE's effectiveness, and unique clinical skills integral to this novel treatment. MORE has been tested in 11 clinical trials funded by more than $40 million in federal research grants. In the largest trial of MORE (250 patients with opioid misuse/opioid use disorder), MORE decreased opioid misuse by 45% by nine-month follow-up, more than doubling the effect of standard therapy. MORE also significantly decreased chronic pain, distress, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Neuroscience shows that MORE decreases the extent to which the brain is triggered by drug cues, while increasing brain responses to natural, healthy rewards. MORE is now being disseminated across the United States. This dissemination effort is urgently needed, in light of the opioid settlement monies that are now reaching the states to help alleviate the opioid crisis.