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| Spirituality in Addiction Treatment and Recovery (A two-part series) |
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Introduction
There is no doubt that spirituality has become an important topic in todays world. Among the general public a new sense of spiritual freedom, an openness to eastern religions, to new age approaches, to alternative therapies, and to Native American and other spiritualities has added great variety to the spiritual landscape of America (Doubleday, n.d.). Introspection, self-help movements, pursuit of the inner child, and various 12 Step approaches have also had a widespread impact. Surveys reported in the popular news media indicate that nearly 80% of Americans believe in the power of prayer to improve the course of illness (Wallis, 1996). Likewise, health care workers also strongly believe in the power of spirituality and/or religiosity to influence the course of medical and psychological interventions as well as the rate of recuperation from chronic illnesses (Feher & Maley, 1999; Kirkpatrick & McCullough, 1999; Rose, 1999 as cited in Piedmont, 2001).
For many of those who work in the addiction treatment field, the use of spiritual concepts in the treatment of alcohol and drug addiction is seen as the clearest demonstration of the value of spirituality and this construct is seen as the central curative factor in recovery (Borman & Dixon, 1998; Green, Fullilove, & Fullilove, 1998; Warfield & Goldstein, 1996, as cited in Piedmont, 2001). Other research has shown that increased spiritual practices have been associated with improved addiction treatment outcome (Carter, 1998), that spirituality has played a role in maintaining treatment gains (Koski-Jännes & Turner, 1999), and that recovering individuals apparently show more evidence of spirituality than those who relapse (Jarusiewicz, 2000). Although the word spirituality has been used increasingly in the literature of the medical and social sciences, the variations in how this word is defined and measured are highly problematic in making sense of the results.
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Part Two of this article can also be found on the Southern Coast ATTC website
http://www.scattc.org/pdf_upload/BeaconSpiritualitypart2.pdf |
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