In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

by Gabor Maté

The mind activity that can physically rewire malfunctioning brain circuits and alter our dysfunctional emotional and cerebral responses is conscious mental effort—what Dr. Schwartz calls mental force. If changing external circumstances can improve brain physiology, so can mental effort. “Intention and attention exert real, physical effects on the brain,” Dr. Schwartz explains.9 Not surprisingly, the brain area activated in studies looking at the effect of self-directed mental effort is the prefrontal cortex, the apex of the brain’s emotional self-regulation system. It’s also an area where, we have learned, the brains of addicts are impaired. The mental activity most critical to the development of emotional self-regulation has been called “dispassionate self-observation” by the authors of an important article on the interface of brain and mind, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Biological Sciences) in 2005. “The way in which a person directs their attention (i.e., mindfully or unmindfully) will,” they write, “affect both the experiential state of the person and the state of his/her brain.”10 Mindful awareness involves directing our attention not only to the mental content of our thoughts, but also to the emotions and mind-states that inform those thoughts. It is being aware of the processes of our mind even as we work through its materials. Mindful awareness is the key to unlocking the automatic patterns that fetter the addicted brain and mind.