Spirituality and the Health Professional

Abstract

The inclusion of spirituality in addictions recovery began with the 12-steps program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cofounded by Bill Wilson, the 12-steps’ spiritual orientation is based on Wilson's own recovery from alcoholism that was associated with a spiritual experience. His correspondence with Carl Jung, who verified the importance of Wilson's experience, empowered Wilson to make spirituality central to the 12 steps. Spirituality remains a source of misunderstanding between the scientific, empirically informed mental health community, and the 12-step recovery movement. This article offers an outline of spiritual development, based on neuroscience, which the professional can utilize in the spiritual aspect of a patient's recovery.

Keywords: :

• addiction
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• 12-step recovery movement
• recovery
• disidentification
• mindfulness
• religiosity
• spiritual experience
• spirituality

Notes

4 The reader is reminded that a critical unresolved issue is the absence of viable, generalizable, evidence-based criteria for determining when a technique for a specific treatment goal is indicated, or contraindicated, for how long and with what matching process for the deliverer of services, given the availability and accessibility of a range of types of necessary resources to enable this. Editor's note.

5 The reader is asked to consider that not every planned for change is measurable, which is related to constraints in necessary knowledge and technologies, and that rarely, if ever, are changes associated with the deliverers of services considered, measured, or reported. Editor's note.

6 The reader is reminded that the concepts of “risk” or “vulnerability” factors, as well as “protective” factors, are often noted in the literature, without adequately noting their dimensions (linear, nonlinear, rates of development, anchoring or integration, cessation, etc.), their “demands,” the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously, from a micro to a meso to a macro level), which are necessary for either of them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically based, individual and/or systemic stake holder-bound, based upon “principles of faith,” historical observation, precedents, and traditions that accumulate over time, perceptual and judgmental constraints, “transient public opinion.” or what. This is necessary to consider and to clarify if these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleth in a field of many stereotypes, tradition-driven activities, “principles of faith,” and stakeholder objectives. Editor's note

7 The reader is reminded that there are many posited substance use etiologies in the literature and is referred to Lettieri et al. 1980. Rarely, do any of these posited etiologies delineate the process from initial use, ongoing use, changes in uses (types of drugs, manner of use, patterns of use, meanings of use, functions of use, becoming a way of life…being context/situation bound, etc…ceasing, beginning again, etc. Editor's note.

8 Roberto Assagioli, MD, was an Italian psychiatrist and pioneer in the fields of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, who founded the psychological movement of psychosynthesis.