The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love – Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits
by Judson Brewer
View on GoodreadsSmoking, checking your phone, binge eating and romantic obsession look like separate problems. Judson Brewer argues they run on the same reward-based learning, and that mindfulness can interrupt the loop. He builds the case from patient stories, laboratory findings and his own meditation practice.
Core ideas
- One mechanism: In Brewer's account, addictive behaviors are products of reward-based learning, whether the object is a cigarette, a smartphone, food or another person.
- Wider than addiction: The same lens extends to compulsive thinking and love, and the book sets the science beside the Buddhist idea of dependent origination and the experience of flow.
- Mindfulness as the tool: Brewer puts mindfulness to work against the loop, and his app-based program for eating, Eat Right Now, comes up in the epilogue.
Published2017
Pages256
ISBN9780300223248
ReadJan 2021
