Character Strengths in the Context of Christian Contemplative Practice Facilitating Recovery from Alcohol Misuse: Two Case Studies

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in studying the association between spirituality and addiction, and the effect of mindfulness on recovery. There have been some attempts at exploring the mediators of the association, but seldom in the context of Christian contemplation and rarely within a single theoretical framework of psychology. This article reports two case studies from an intervention study carried out in Nairobi, Kenya, that suggest that the Christian contemplative practice has the potential to reduce alcohol misuse while facilitating the emergence of a three-dimensional religious-spirituality model involving the character strengths of self-awareness, self-regulation, humility, and leading to forgiveness, social responsibility, and social intelligence.

KEYWORDS:

• alcoholism
• character strengths
• Christian contemplative practice
• Jesus prayer
• mindfulness
• positive psychology
• psychology of religion

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author is grateful to Dr. Joanna Collicutt (Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, UK) and Dr. David Ball (Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London) for their supervisory role in the author’s PhD project, in which these case studies originally featured. Thanks are also due to Sean Burns for his suggestions towards the improvement of the language of the text. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 6th European Conference on Positive Psychology (ECPP), Russia, Moscow, June 26–29, 2012.

Notes

1. Swahili expression; literally means “what,” but here used as gap filler.