ACCEPTANCE AND HAZARDOUS DRINKINGOSTAFIN AND MARLATT SURFING THE URGE: EXPERIENTIAL ACCEPTANCE MODERATES THE RELATION BETWEEN AUTOMATIC ALCOHOL MOTIVATION AND HAZARDOUS DRINKING

There is growing evidence for the role of automatic mental processes in substance use. Recent research suggests that mindfulness training may be a useful treatment for substance use disorders and theoretical analyses suggest mindfulness works by decoupling the relation between automatic appetitive responses and actual behav-ior. The current study was designed to examine whether mindfulness moderates the relation between automatic processes and alcohol behavior. A sample of un-dergraduate drinkers (N = 50) completed measures of hazardous drinking, mindful-ness and automatic alcohol motivation (using the Implicit Association Test; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Regression analyses indicate that greater mindful acceptance of current experience weakens the positive relation between automatic alcohol–approach associations and hazardous drinking found in other research (Palfai & Ostafin, 2003). The results contribute to basic science by indicat-ing that the relation between automatic mental processes and behavior may be moderated by mindfulness and to clinical science by suggesting how mindfulness might work in changing substance use behavior. A defining element of addiction is the difficulty in refraining from substance use even when one has conscious intentions to do s