"Understanding the Spirituality of Recovery", by
Thomas S. Baker --The Almacan, Nov. 1986
(now the Journal of Employee Assistance -
www.eap-association.org)
It is generally recognized that addiction is a
disease which is, at least in part, spiritual. It is
curious, therefore, that EAP professionals avoid
references to the spiritual dimension, at least
in the printed media. This is not to say that EAPs
do not recognize and accept a tri-part definition
of addictions (physical, psychological, spiritual).
It is just that the last part -- spirituality -- often
gets neglected when it comes to the written word.
The reasons for this are not hard to see.
"Spirituality" is an emotionally loaded and, some
might say, highly ambiguous term. Mention it and
responses vary from "uh-oh . . . here comes the
Godtalk," and disdain, to comfortable acceptance.
Some see "spirituality" as synonymous with the
Judeo-Christian tradition, while others view the
concept more in terms of Eastern religion. Still
others -- for the apparent reason of avoiding any
link with traditional religion -- talk of spirituality in
the language of humanistic psychology and
philosophy.
Another reason why talk of spirituality remains
limited is that it is not a term which will easily
yield to empirical verification. Ours remains the
age of logical positivism: if you can't objectively
measure it, it doesn't exist. We can measure
decreased liver enzyme production and various
other physical signs of medical recovery in
addiction. The degree to which we can measure
"turning it over" or developing "a conscious contact
with a power greater than the self," however,
remains a chiefly metaphysical process which,
to some, sounds curiously out of place.
Nonetheless, the need to deal with and talk
about spiritual aspects of addiction and recovery
remains. This is so because, for all the exciting
new evidence about genetic and biological pre-
cursors to addiction, there remains the exper-
iential certainty that addiction is, at least in part,
something which will not quite "fit into" a totally
material, scientific paradigm. To write effectively
about addiction, we need to develop the ability
to write comfortably about spirituality.
One of the less-threatening ways of dealing
with spirituality is to see it in terms of meaning
and value. The alcoholic may drink to excess
because he is genetically predisposed to do so,
but also because he is usually "thirsty" for finding
some meaning and purpose for his everyday
actions. Plagued by "the Peggy Lee Syndrome"
("Is that all there is?"), he seeks to either produce
a fake sense of purpose or to anesthetize such
nihilistic feelings. This writer once spoke with a
recovering addict who was a Presbyterian
minister. He said: "In seminary I was surrounded
by big questions, doubt, and ambiguity. Then I
discovered amphetamines and gin; and bingo,
all the uncertainties vanished and everything
made sense . . . for awhile . . ."
A young assembly line worker put it another
way: "Bolting the same fender on the same car
hour after hour, day after day, wasn't quite so
boring when I was coked-up . . . I could really get
into it then . . ." Every EAP has heard countless
similar stories and may, perhaps, have missed
some of the underlying content; put simply, "I
didn't drink or get high just for fun, I did it to
make sense out of things . . . and to avoid the
feeling that maybe nothing would ever really
make any sense."
Recovery, then, becomes a process by which
one learns to "make sense" out of life and by
which one learns to live with a certain amount
of ambiguity and doubt. It is a process of sub-
stituting the Spirit of "spirits" as an ally in the
process of "making sense."
The spiritual aspect of recovery, however, is
more than just finding meaning and purpose.
12 Step recovery programs have taught us that
the addict's primary problem is his penchant for
playing God. Even rampant atheists behave in
a god-like manner, arrogating control of their
lives and their universe onto themselves. A
sense of "connection" is lost; the experience of
"relatedness" is foregone in such individuals;
and they experience a profound sense of lone-
liness and isolation. As one recovering pro-
fessional put it: "I didn't start recovering when
I started believing in God but rather when I
started believing I _wasn't_ God."
So talk of spiritual recovery must also include
talk of "reconnection", of rediscovering one's
relatedness to the environment, to other persons,
tothe "power greater than the self" which is the
source of all connectedness.
Clearly, as admittedly imprecise as such talk
may be, EAPs need to develop and become
more comfortable with a "spiritual vocabulary"
which includes reference to meaning, value,
purpose, and connectedness. This writer
acknowledges that the foregoing is woefully
inadequate but he challenges others to continue
to think and write along these lines. We are
familiar with psychological interpretations; we
are excited by new biological and genetic
explanations; let us not lose sight of the
spiritual dimension.
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