Can EMDR Help With Addiction and Craving?

The link between trauma and addiction is well established. Difficult experiences frequently sit in the background of substance use problems, and PTSD and substance use disorders co-occur often enough that clinicians expect to see them together. Despite that, people with both have historically been excluded from most trials of trauma-focused therapy, partly on the assumption that processing trauma might destabilise recovery. The result is a group with a clear need and comparatively thin evidence behind the treatments offered to them. There is also a second, more specific idea at work. Craving is often triggered by cues, and those cues operate through vivid, emotionally charged memories associated with using. If EMDR can reduce the vividness and pull of a memory, might it reduce craving too? A meta-analysis by Ji-Woo Seok and colleagues, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry (2025), pooled fourteen studies to find out. It examined both addiction-related outcomes and the emotional symptoms that commonly accompany them. The findings were mixed in an instructive way. EMDR produced moderate or larger effects on craving, PTSD symptoms, depression, and anxiety. But the effect on overall addiction severity was not statistically significant. That distinction deserves emphasis rather than burial. On this evidence, EMDR looks useful for the emotional machinery that drives substance use, the craving, the trauma, the low mood and anxiety, while not, on its own, resolving the disorder as a whole. Read sensibly, that makes it a candidate component of addiction treatment rather than a standalone answer, which is roughly how most clinicians already use it. The authors are also candid that the quality of the included studies was generally low and that evidence on long-term effects is lacking. They call for more rigorous designs, larger samples, and proper follow-up. That is a fair assessment, and worth keeping in mind against more enthusiastic claims sometimes made for EMDR in this area. Addiction is difficult to face, and effective help exists. If this affects you or someone close to you, your GP or a specialist service is a good place to start. Source: Seok, J.-W., Kim, K., & Kim, J. U. (2025). Therapeutic effects of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing for substance use disorders: a meta-analysis of addiction-related and emotional symptoms. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1660046.