Smart Patch Helps Addicts, Alcoholics Manage Stress And Cravings

FRIDAY, Oct. 3, 2025 (HealthDay News) — A “stress coach” smart patch can help people struggling with addiction or alcoholism manage their anxiety and cravings, lowering their risk of relapse, a new study shows.

The biofeedback patch provides people with real-time monitoring of their heart rate, which can become erratic for folks stressed out by drug or alcohol cravings, researchers said.

Overall, people using the patch had a 64% reduction in their alcohol and drug use compared to others in treatment for substance use disorders, researchers reported Oct. 1 in JAMA Psychiatry.

"One of the hallmarks of early addiction recovery is poor self-awareness of emotional states,” said lead researcher David Eddie, a psychologist at the Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"People in recovery can experience a lot of stress, but they often don’t have great awareness of it or proactively manage it,” he said in a news release.

For people in early recovery, stress often triggers cravings, researchers said in background notes. Resisting those cravings can create even more stress, leading to a downward spiral that often ends in relapse.

Special breathing exercises can help people regulate their mood and improve their self-control — but only if they know when their stress is leading to cravings and anxiety, researchers said.

For the new study, researchers recruited 115 people with severe substance use disorder in their first year of recovery.

Half of the participants got a biofeedback smart patch on top of their treatment plan, while the other half continued with treatment as usual.

For the next eight weeks, all participants reported their mood, cravings or any substance use twice a day with their smartphone.

"The latest … biofeedback devices can detect when people are stressed or experiencing cravings, and, using AI, prompt them to do a brief burst of biofeedback," Eddie said. "This allows people to get out in front of risk."

People wearing the patch reported lower levels of negative emotions and cravings, results showed. They also were 64% less likely to use alcohol or drugs.

This study focused only on people in their first year of recovery, researchers noted. More studies are needed to show if biofeedback has sustained benefits.

“The first year of recovery is immensely challenging,” Eddie said. “Our goal is to find tools that not only bridge people during that first year, but also help them manage their stress for the rest of their life.”

Dr. Manassa Hany, division director of addiction psychiatry at Northwell Health’s Zucker Hillside and South Oaks hospitals in New York, called the smart patch “magnificent.”

“The process of relapsing or drug use — it builds up subconsciously or unconsciously in the individual's mind and psyche — then it manifests itself,” said Hany, who was not involved in the research. “It seems to the observer that it just happened all of a sudden, but actually, it was building up without the individual knowing.”

Addiction treatment aims to help people with coping skills, he said in a news release. Recognizing the physiological build up is key.

"If we're able to control this physiological response to stress and anxiety and fear, that can cut down the vicious circle of increasing each other and keep managing the stressful situation. Those can be good skills instead of going into substance use to curb this feeling. You have a natural way of doing that to help curb the unpleasant feeling of stress," Hany said.

More information

American Addiction Centers has more on biofeedback for addiction treatment.

SOURCES: Mass General Brigham, news release, Oct. 1, 2025; Northwell Health, news release, Oct. 1, 2025

What This Means For You

People with substance use disorder may want to ask their doctor or treatment facility whether biofeedback training might help them manage stress and cravings.