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 Longtime members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) often report little or no craving for alcohol, but why this happens remains poorly understood. Now, in what is believed to be the first study to explore brain physiology in AA members, researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center found that members who recited AA prayers after viewing drinking-related images reported less craving for alcohol after praying than after just reading a newspaper. The reduced cravings in those that prayed corresponded to increased activity in brain regions responsible for attention and emotion as measured by MRI, according to study results published recently in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. 
 
 “Our findings suggest that the experience of AA over the years had left these members with an innate ability to use the AA experience—prayer in this case―to minimize the effect of alcohol triggers in producing craving,” says senior author Marc Galanter, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU Langone. “Craving is diminished in long-term AA members compared to patients who have stopped drinking for some period of time but are more vulnerable to relapse.” 
 
 The study results revolve around craving, one of the criteria physicians use to diagnose addiction. Such strong desires can persist even in addicted people who no longer use alcohol or drugs, and AA members recite abstinence-promoting prayers to reduce cravings. 
 
 “We wanted to determine what is going on in the brain in response to alcohol-craving triggers, such as passing by a bar or experiencing something upsetting, when long-term AA members are exposed to them,” Dr. Galanter says. 
 
 To investigate, Dr. Galanter and his colleagues recruited 20 long-term AA members who reported no cravings for alcohol during the week preceding testing. The participants were placed in an MRI scanner and then shown either pictures of alcoholic drinks or people drinking to simulate drinking behavior in a laboratory setting. The pictures were presented twice: first after asking the participant to read neutral material from a newspaper, and again after the participant recited an AA prayer promoting abstinence from alcohol to represent the impact of AA. 
 
 According to the study authors, all research subjects reported some degree of craving for alcohol after viewing the images, and less craving after reciting an AA prayer. MRI data revealed that there were changes in parts of the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that controls attention, and in brain sites responsible for control of emotion and the semantic reappraisal of emotion, which represents the different ways a people understand situations based on their perspectives. 
 
 “This finding suggests that there appears to be an emotional response to alcohol triggers, but that it’s experienced and understood differently when someone has the protection of the AA experience,” Galanter says. 
 
 In Galanter’s decade-long research into the role of spirituality in long-term AA members, he and his colleagues have found that members undergo a transition from initially craving alcohol to a new status where they reported little or no craving. This reduction in craving, according to Dr. Galanter, is associated with the amount of time that passed following a “spiritual awakening” in AA, which marks a transition to a different attitude toward drinking. 
 
 Previous investigations by other researchers of the role of prayer on drinking behavior found that alcohol abusers who reported a spiritual awakening drank less after treatment for alcoholism. Research participants assigned to engage in prayer—unrelated to drinking—every day for four weeks drank about half as much as those who were not. 
 
 “Our current findings open up a new field of inquiry into physiologic changes that may accompany spiritual awakening and perspective changes in AA members and others,” says Galanter. He says the study results also support the validity of a long-term AA experience in terms of physiologic changes in the brain. 
 
 In early 2016, Oxford University Press published Dr. Galanter’s book, What Is Alcoholics Anonymous?, which provides context for his group’s studies of the psychological effects of AA. 
 
 Dr. Galanter’s co-authors were Zoran Josipovic, PhD, and Helen Dermatis, PhD, of NYU Langone, Jochen Weber of Columbia University, and Mary Alice Millard, formerly of NYU Langone. The research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. 
 
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 As many of us know all too well, self-control is a limited resource that can, and does, get depleted. Fortunately, several recent studies have revealed ways we can replenish our ability to resist temptation, ranging from watching reruns to gargling with glucose. 
 
 Now there’s evidence of still another method of getting ourselves back on track, and it’s a strategy as old as they come: Prayer. 
 
 A pair of German psychologists—Malte Friese of Saarland University and Michaela Wänke of the University of Mannheim—report people can exercise self-control without depleting their reservoir of that vital resource if they engage in “a brief period of personal prayer.” Their study is published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 
 
 "Even brief social interactions can activate cognitive resources … providing a cognitive boost that can benefit subsequent self-control attempts." 
 
 Their study featured 79 people (mostly women, and largely made up of psychology students). Forty-one (just over half of the total) described themselves as Christians; another 24 were atheists or agnostics, while 14 listed other religious affiliations. 
 
 Half began their session by engaging in five minutes of personal prayer; the others were instructed to spend those first five minutes thinking about anything of their choice. They then watched five minutes of humorous film clips. Half the members of each group (the prayers and the thinkers) were “asked to suppress all emotions that arise (as they watched the clips) and control their facial appearance"—an activity that takes effort and uses up one's self-control. 
 
 Afterward, everyone participated in a Stroop task, that famous test where blocks of letters are in color spell out the name of a different color. Participants were asked to rapidly indicate the color of the ink—a task that required strong self-control, since one’s first instinct is to go with the color being spelled out. 
 
 The results: Among the thinkers, those that suppressed their emotions during the film clips did less well on the test than those who had allowed themselves to laugh. As expected, their self-control had been depleted. 
 
 But this dynamic was not found among those who used that interlude to speak with God. Participants who suppressed their laughter and then prayed “exercised self-control … but did not become depleted,” the researchers write. 
 
 How did the prayer keep their self-control robust? Friese and Wänke offer several possible explanations, but their analysis suggests it likely has to do with the fact that “people interpret praying as a social interaction with God.” 
 
 They note that previous research has found that “even brief social interactions can activate cognitive resources … providing a cognitive boost that can benefit subsequent self-control attempts.” 
 
 If their interpretation is correct, prayer isn’t uniquely powerful in this regard. An intense, meaningful concentration with a close friend would presumably have the same effect. 
 
 But that hardly negates these findings. If you’re noticing self-control slipping away, and you feel a meaningful connection with a higher power, a few whispered words might make all the difference.
– Does prayer have the power to help recovering alcoholics squash temptation? A small new study out of the NYU Langone Medical Center finds that at least among 20 long-term Alcoholics Anonymous members who reported no cravings in the week leading up to the test, prayer reduced cravings that arose when shown images of alcoholic drinks or people drinking. To perform the tests, the researchers report in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, participants were asked to read the newspaper or pray after being shown the images. Participants reported some craving following seeing the images, but less so after having prayed, while MRI data showed changes in parts of the prefrontal cortex that controls attention as well as in regions thought to control emotion. "This finding suggests that there appears to be an emotional response to alcohol triggers, but that it’s experienced and understood differently when someone has the protection of the AA experience," says senior author Marc Galanter, who published a book on Alcoholics Anonymous earlier this year. He goes on to suggest that the reduction in cravings in AA members correlates to the amount of time that has elapsed since one's so-called "spiritual awakening," which AA describes as taking a different attitude toward drinking. In previous research, participants asked to pray every day for four weeks drank about half as much as those who were not. (See why some have been challenging the 75-year hegemony of AA.)