U.S. Spent $410,624 on Project to Teach Chinese Meditation to Cocaine Addicts

The U.S. government has spent $410,625 to study the effects of teaching Chinese meditation to cocaine addicts. The study, which is titled “Treatment of Cocaine Addiction with Integrative Meditation,” received $225,000 in tax money in 2009 and $185,625 in 2010, for a total of $410,625. The project was scheduled to run from April 1, 2009 until March 31, 2011. The grant was issued by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the NIH. “The specific aims,” of the study, according to the NIH description, “include: (1) To conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial of 66 outpatient cocaine users with 12 weekly facilitation meetings to assess feasibility of recruiting and retaining cocaine addicts, and to determine effect size of IM-augmented treatment in comparison with Non-directive therapy (NT) control, with both groups receiving standard treatment as usual (TAU), (2) To examine the changes in attention networks and negative mood as possible mediators of treatment outcomes between the two groups.”...more