Spirituality can be a controversial topic in any area, but it is especially so in the fields of addiction science and treatment. Therapy, neuroscience and psychiatry are all based on the scientific method of drawing conclusions from rigorous experimentation. At the same time, one of the most successful and widely-used methods of recovering from addiction is the 12 steps: the process used by Alcoholics Anonymous and other groups, which makes no effort to disguise the fact that it is spiritual in nature.
Addiction is Also, But Not Only, a Spiritual Disorder
The dissonance between scientifically-based treatment and spiritual recovery may seem curious, but it is important to realize that each one treats a certain aspect. Addiction is an all-encompassing disorder, affecting the body as well as the mind and spirit. Different disciplines are appropriate for treating each of these spheres. Regardless of the details of their personal and professional lives, doctors don’t offer spiritual counsel and 12-step members have no business playing the roles of psychotherapists.
The personal experiences of almost every addict in recovery confirms the spiritual nature of addiction, and this is precisely the aspect that the 12-steps treat. Spirituality, in the abstract sense, addresses the areas of life that medicine and treatment cannot: one’s feelings of regret, meaninglessness and dissatisfaction. There is neither a pill nor a psychiatric approach that can give an addict a sense of purpose and fulfillment. There are only spiritual applications to these problems, and the following are but four of them.
Powerlessness
The Spiritual Malady
A feeling of powerlessness is perhaps the most well-known and easily recognizable symptoms of addiction. It’s the first step in every 12-step program, which states “We admitted we were powerless…” The feeling of powerlessness is felt most strongly with regard to an individual’s personal addiction, such as alcohol or gambling, but it also encompasses life as a whole. Addicts are overwhelmed with the sense that they cannot control their own lives, thoughts and emotions, and it is for this reason above all else that they engage in addictive patterns.
The Spiritual Remedy
If lack of power is a spiritual malady, then power is its spiritual remedy. As it is explained in 12-step programs, substances and behaviors initially serve to give addicts a sense of power over life, yet ultimately result in an even greater loss of power. Thus, the 12-steps speak widely of a “higher power,” something that is greater than not only drugs and alcohol, but also life itself. The mention of this “higher power” is unarguably the most contentious aspect of the 12-steps, but it is at the same time on of the most misunderstood. Many recovering addicts turn toward religion in pursuit of this power, but many also find it somewhere else: some in nature, some in the universe, all in something universal and greater than their selves.
Guilt & Shame
The Spiritual Malady
Feelings of guilt and shame are prevalent both in addiction and in recovery. In addiction, bad behavior gives way to regret, which feeds addiction and therefore leads to even more bad behavior. If and when they get help and enter the recovery process, many addicts lost everything: from friends and family to money and personal belongings. They long to return to the past and change their actions, but cannot get over the impossibility of ever doing so.
The Spiritual Remedy
Alleviating the damage done in the past is one of the core components of the 12-steps, particularly in Steps 8 and 9, in which addicts make amends to those they’ve wronged. In making amends, they pay back the money they owe. They apologize to the people they’ve hurt. Most importantly, they make a pledge to both themselves and their victims to live a better life and to not repeat their past behaviors. With each amend made, there is closure. There is spiritual healing in the knowledge that they’ve done everything in their power to make things right.
Relationships
The Spiritual Malady
It’s no secret that addicts struggle with relationships. Some struggle to maintain relationships. Others are codependent and unable to escape relationships. Almost every addict has lied, cheated, or stolen during the course of a relationship, whether it is romantic, familial or friendship. In the mind of an addict, a relationship is not about two people caring for each other. It is about one person getting something from the other: sex, money, self-worth, etc.
The Spiritual Remedy
Relationships are spiritual in nature, for they are about connecting with one another. They always involve an intuitive sense of compassion and affection, which the 12-steps are highly efficient at imparting. The inventory-taking involved in the 5th step, as well as the amends and service required in other steps, teaches addicts to view others as people with their own problems and shortcomings — in short, as equals no better or worse that anyone else.
Belonging
The Spiritual Malady
Finally, one of the major spiritual symptoms of addiction is an incomprehensible feeling of loneliness. Few people but addicts truly know what it means to feel alone in a room full of people. Time after time when addicts relate their personal stories, they explain how they “never belonged.” They’ve felt like an outcast for as long as they can remember, and the bridges burned throughout addiction only exacerbate this emptiness.
The Spiritual Remedy
Powerlessness, regret, relationships, and loneliness are all acutely suffered in addiction: they are but only some of the many things that addicts have in common with one another. Thus, the lack of belonging felt in addiction can serve to give addicts a sense of belonging in recovery. Both in the rooms of 12-step meetings and outside of them, recovering addicts share in the bond of similar experiences. They’ve felt the same feelings and thought the same thoughts. They’ve made all the same mistakes and now work to recover from those mistakes — not alone and on their own, but together and with each other.
Contributed by: All About Recovery, Inc.