With relapse rates sky-high in the majority of addiction programs, people struggling with addiction can find themselves in and out of treatment and rehabilitation programs for years. 

Often, people with addiction even leave a treatment program before completion.

Neurofeedback intends to bring increased success to the treatment of addiction. Combining neurofeedback with other addiction treatments may help a person finally escape the cycle of addiction.   

Many people think addiction is due to a lack of self-discipline, but addiction is a physiological condition, and it’s extremely difficult to change. Addicts struggle with emotions such as guilt, shame, anger, and frustration, which further hinder their recovery.

Addiction is a brain disease, a mental health disorder that severely debilitates a person in all aspects of his or her life. In addition, people with addiction frequently suffer from other mental health disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety.

The current model of 30-day inpatient treatment has a high relapse rate and often doesn’t work.

Yet, at this time, insurance doesn’t usually pay for longer, more helpful alternatives, and people are stuck with the medical model of a 30-day treatment program that doesn’t address all their needs or help them acclimate back to everyday living. Neurofeedback treats the brain disorder of addiction by retraining a person’s brain.

Teaching the brain to be calm, focused, and relaxed helps one think more clearly and rationally. As stressful incidents are a significant cause of relapse, neurofeedback training helps build a solid base for recovery and teaches the tools one needs to cope over the long term.

Medications may be helpful to begin a change in the short term, but recovery from addiction is a long-term process.

Neurofeedback helps retrain the brain patterns causing dysfunction, giving a person with addiction the ability to succeed past the typical 30-day treatment cycle. In addition, for a person who has relied on a substance to manage daily life, medication may be just another substance.

During times of stress, a person with addiction needs to be able to remain calm, reasonable, and rational in order to make essential choices needed to stay clean and sober.
  • Neurofeedback aids in teaching a person’s brain to operate in a more calm, rational state.
  • It’s a respectful, non-invasive therapy with no known side effects.
  • According to several research studies, integrating neurofeedback training into one’s treatment program may yield higher rates of success and lower rates of relapse than treatment programs without neurofeedback for all age groups.
  • Neurofeedback clinicians report that more than 85% of their clients who train with neurofeedback improve their ability to focus, regulate behavior, and reduce impulsivity.
  • Since neurofeedback may help a person manage emotions and mood and improve sleep, adding neurofeedback to an addiction treatment program may give people the necessary tools to help them be more in control, achieve success, and avoid relapse.

Neurofeedback addresses dysfunctional brain patterns that contribute to addiction.

By using qEEG brain maps to determine the specific areas that are malfunctioning, a customized brain training plan targets and trains the regions with under or overarousal and connectivity. This may help correct some of the physiological aspects of the disease. Neurofeedback helps replace maladaptive behaviors with more healthy patterns.

People with addiction want to be free of this disease, and they want to learn new ways to manage it. Neurofeedback may assist a person in learning to be aware of triggers that lead to numbing and destructive behavior patterns and eventual relapse. With neurofeedback, a person receives real, physiological help, and the tools necessary to free themselves from the destructive cycles of addiction.

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