Whatever your vice, a new study says just three minutes of play-time of the classic Russian video game can curb urges to use. The research came out of Plymouth University and Queensland University of Technology, both in Australia, and was published in the journal Addictive Behaviors.
The Stats
Thirty-one people between the ages of 18 and 27 participated in the study. Half of them played Tetris for at least three minutes whenever they experienced an urge to engage in their addiction of choice, whether it was substances like drugs or food or behaviors like sex or spending. All of the the participants (including the placebo group that didn’t play any Tetris), reported the severity of their cravings via text message to the researchers.
After analyzing the data, researchers learned that playing Tetris when experiencing urges helped reduce them from 56 to 70 percent, depending on the type of craving. The desire to consume drugs, coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol was lessened in severity by 21 percent, and behavioral urges to have sex, sleep, socialize reduced by 16 percent.
“This is the first demonstration that cognitive interference can be used outside the lab to reduce cravings for substances and activities other than eating,” wrote Plymouth University Professor of Psychology, Jackie Andrade in the research paper.
“We think the Tetris effect happens because craving involves imagining the experience of consuming a particular substance or indulging in a particular activity. Playing a visually interesting game like Tetris occupies the mental processes that support that imagery; it is hard to imagine something vividly and play Tetris at the same time,” she added.
This is definitely good news.
Power to Gamers
The results of this study prove a powerful point that anyone who’s experienced addiction probably understands—urges and cravings to use can be pushed out of your mind through simple distraction techniques. I’ve experienced this over and over again, not only with urges to drink, smoke, call the loser ex-boyfriend, spend $300 on a skincare regimen or stuff my face with cookies ‘n cream ice cream, but also with emotional upsets.
Engaging activities that require a sufficient chunk of mental focus, like crossword puzzles, practicing my very basic Spanish skills online, memorizing a difficult combinations in a dance class or even going to battle on air hockey with my best friend always helps me take my mind off a problem. This, in turn, extinguishes the accompanying distressing emotions.
What’s great about the distraction technique is you don’t have to give power to an urge or an uncomfortable feeling by making it bigger than it is. Instead of analyzing it, or trying to understand it through the lens of your childhood trauma or supposed “defects of character” you can just score a few Tetris points, forget about it and move on.
Given it’s super easy to play video games now that we all have smartphones, maybe downloading the Tetris app is a good idea. For the newly sober or even those of us with a few years under our belts. Unless, that is, you’re a video game addict.
Photo Courtesy of Kichigai Mentat from Glassboro (Found: Original Tetяis Machine) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons (resized and cropped)