In what appears to be the first scientific study to explore the brain activity in Alcoholics Anonymous members, test subjects experienced reduced alcohol cravings when they prayed.
The study was conducted by New York University's Langone Medical Center. The results were published the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse.
The study involved 20 long-term AA members and an MRI machine which measures brain activity. The test subjects were shown drinking-related pictures, such as images of alcoholic drinks and people enjoying themselves drinking alcohol. In all the test subjects, the photos caused them to crave alcohol.
Then the test subjects were given newspapers to read. The cravings remained the same.
However, when the test subjects recited the AA prayer, their cravings lessened.
The short AA prayer is often called "The Serenity Prayer." It goes like this: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
The Serenity Prayer was authored by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and has been adopted by several recovery programs, also called Twelve Step programs, including Alcoholics Anonymous.
"Our findings suggest 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," said senior study author Marc Galanter, MD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at NYU Langone.
The MRI scans revealed particular brain activity among the respondents when shown the tempting pictures.
The changes were confined to the prefrontal cortex region of the brain which controls attention and in the brain sites that control emotion. This suggests there is an emotional response to alcohol triggers.
'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 said.
Galanter published a book about Alcoholics Anonymous earlier this year.
In a different study, respondents also reported how prayer helped them resist drinking. Participants who were asked to pray every day for four weeks drank half as much as those who did not pray.