Jud Brewer – Changing Habits

March 11, 2022

In this episode, Wendy speaks with addiction psychiatrist and contemplative researcher Jud Brewer. Jud is one of the leading figures in the use of mindfulness for addiction and anxiety, and his work emphasizes the brain’s habit cycle, and how to change it. He’s also developed a number of smartphone apps to deliver contemplative interventions widely, which research is finding to be highly successful. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• his own use of meditation to relieve stress, and where that led;
• the failure of willpower for treating addictions;
• the benefits and downsides of the brain’s habit mechanisms;
• commonalities between Buddhist philosophy and modern psychology;
• the key role of awareness in changing habits;
• the basic “habit loop” (trigger – behavior – result);
• anxiety as a habit;
• mindfulness for habit change;
• divisiveness as a bad habit;
• research on the effectiveness of app-based interventions;
• next steps for digital therapeutics;
• insights on communicating science to the public;
• and the power of kindness and connection as the ultimate reward.

Jud Brewer, MD, PhD, is a New York Times best-selling author, neuroscientist, addiction psychiatrist, and thought leader in the field of habit change. He is the director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he also serves as an associate professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences in the School of Public Health. He is the executive medical director of behavioral health at Sharecare Inc., and a research affiliate at MIT. Jud has developed and tested novel mindfulness programs for habit change, including treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety. He is the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) and Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind (Avery/Penguin Random House, 2021).

Resources

Jud’s personal website
Brown University Mindfulness Center

• Unwinding Anxiety app
• Craving to Quit app
• Explainer video: Anxiety as a habit
• Explainer video: Habit loops
• Paper: Quitting starts in the brain: a randomized controlled trial of app-based mindfulness shows decreases in neural responses to smoking cues that predict reductions in smoking (2019). Neuropsychopharmacology
• Paper: Awareness drives changes in reward value which predict eating behavior change: Probing reinforcement learning using experience sampling from mobile mindfulness training for maladaptive eating (2021). Journal of Behavioral Addictions
• Paper: Craving to quit: psychological models and neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness training as treatment for addictions (2013). Psychology of Addictive Behaviors

View or download a transcript of this episode