Tai Chi outperformed running on selected attention outcomes in a 12-week trial of men with methamphetamine use disorder. It did not show a significant advantage for drug craving, so the cognitive finding should not be relabeled as reduced desire to use.
Zhang and colleagues randomly assigned 48 men to moderate-intensity Tai Chi or treadmill running. Both programs scheduled 60-minute sessions three times weekly, with intensity targeted to 65–75% of maximum heart rate. Participants underwent craving, attention-bias and physical-fitness assessments before and after treatment. The comparator was an active exercise program rather than no treatment.
Tai Chi showed favorable comparisons for attention bias and reaction time. The craving comparison was nonsignificant (p = 0.880). Other measured variables also did not establish a general advantage over running. The difference between the two active programs answers a specific comparative question: whether Tai Chi performed better under this protocol. It does not identify how either program compares with an untreated course of recovery.
There was no follow-up period to determine persistence, and only men were studied. Attention bias, reaction time and subjective craving are different outcomes and need not change together. Proposed mechanisms involving emotion regulation or brain connectivity were not directly established by those behavioral comparisons. Nor did the trial establish reduced relapse, safe driving or a drug-concentration threshold. Its practical contribution is a selective attention-related advantage requiring replication, alongside a negative craving result that should remain visible when describing the intervention. Longer treatment could be tested, but cannot be assumed to convert the null craving finding into benefit.
See working-memory maintenance in a different Tai Chi trial.