Mind-Body Approaches to Prevention and Intervention for Alcohol and Other Drug Use/Abuse in Young Adults

Alcohol and other drug (AOD) misuse is highly prevalent among young adults and creates myriad long-term problematic social, economic, and health consequences. Current treatments aimed at preventing or alleviating AOD misuse have demonstrated fairly inconsistent and weak effectiveness and, thus, are far from a complete solution. In this review, we describe the current state of AOD interventions for young adults and present an alternative emotion regulation framework for understanding AOD use/misuse. We then describe implications of this framework for interventions to promote healthier emotion regulation to successfully reduce AOD use/misuse. In particular, we assert that mind⁻body approaches, such as meditation, distress tolerance, and yoga, may promote emotion regulation skills that allow young adults to manage their stressful experiences and distressing emotions without AOD use. We review the available literature on mind⁻body interventions targeting AOD use/misuse in young adults and offer suggestions for future intervention development and research.