Trial reportAddictive behaviors2020
Ultra-brief breath counting (mindfulness) training promotes recovery from stress-induced alcohol-seeking in student drinkers.
Trial report in Addictive behaviors, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Adolescent Substance Use and Substance Use Disorders: A Systematic Review.Pediatrics · 2026Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Neurological Evidence of Diverse Self-Help Breathing Training With Virtual Reality and Biofeedback Assistance: Extensive Exploration Study of Electroencephalography Markers.JMIR formative research · 2024Trial
- Brief Online Negative Affect Focused Functional Imagery Training Improves 2-Week Drinking Outcomes in Hazardous Student Drinkers: a Pilot Randomised Controlled Trial.International journal of behavioral medicine · 2022Trial
- The Effects of Mindfulness on Brain Network Dynamics Following an Acute Stressor in a Population of Drinking Adults.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- The Effects of Mindfulness on Brain Network Dynamics Following an Acute Stressor in a Population of Moderate to Heavy Drinkers.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Implementing twelve-weeks of loving-kindness meditation and mindfulness of breathing for adolescents with nonsuicidal self-injury and their parents: a mixed method pilot study.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- How Does Mindfulness Alleviate Panic Buying: The Mediating Role of Social Alienation and Death Anxiety.Psychology research and behavior management · 2025Article
- Translation Effectiveness of Offset Heart Rate Biofeedback as a Mindless Intervention for Alcohol Craving Among Risky Drinkers: Controlled Experiment.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Third-Generation Therapies for the Management of Psychoactive Substance Use in Young People: Scoping Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Brief online negative affect focused functional imagery training (FIT) improves four-week drinking outcomes in hazardous student drinkers: A pilot randomised controlled trial replication in South Africa.Addictive behaviors reports · 2024Article
- Ultra-Brief Breath Counting (Mindfulness) Training Abolishes Negative Affect-Induced Alcohol Motivation in Hazardous Community Drinkers.Mindfulness · 2024Article
- Risk Pathways Contributing to the Alcohol Harm Paradox: Socioeconomic Deprivation Confers Susceptibility to Alcohol DependenceFrontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
- Brief Negative Affect Focused Functional Imagery Training Abolishes Stress-Induced Alcohol Choice in Hazardous Student Drinkers.Journal of addiction · 2021Article
- State anxiety and alcohol choice: Evidence from experimental and online observational studies.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2020Observational
- Relative expected value of drugs versus competing rewards underpins vulnerability to and recovery from addiction.Behavioural brain research · 2020Review
- Does acute stress influence the Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer effect? Implications for substance use disorders.Psychopharmacology · 2020Article
- Addiction is driven by excessive goal-directed drug choice under negative affect: translational critique of habit and compulsion theory.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The therapeutic effect of mindfulness interventions on problematic drinking is thought to be driven by increased resilience to the impact of stress on negative mood and alcohol-seeking behaviour, but this claim needs empirical support. To address this hypothesis, the current study tested whether brief training of one component of mindfulness - breath counting - would reduce drinkers' sensitivity to the effect of noise stress on subjective mood and alcohol-seeking behaviour. Baseline alcohol-seeking was measured by choice to view alcohol versus food thumbnail pictures in 192 student drinkers. Participants then received a 6-minute audio file which either trained breath counting or recited a popular science extract, in separate groups. All participants were then stressed by a loud industrial noise and alcohol-seeking was measured again simultaneously to quantify the change from baseline. Subjective mood was measured after all three stages (baseline, post intervention, post stress test). The breath counting group were instructed to deploy this technique during the stress test. Results showed that the breath counting versus control intervention improved subjective mood relative to baseline, attenuated the worsening of subjective mood produced by stress induction, and accelerated recovery from a stress induced increase in alcohol-seeking behaviour. Exploratory moderation analysis showed that this accelerated recovery from stress induced alcohol-seeking by breath counting was weaker in more alcohol dependent participants. Mindfulness therapies may improve problematic drinking by increasing resilience to stress induced negative mood and alcohol-seeking, as observed in this study. The weaker therapeutic effect of breath counting in more dependent drinkers may reveal limitations to this intervention strategy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.