Leaps of faith: the role of religious development in recovering integrity among Jewish alcoholics and drug addicts

Abstract

This is a report from a longitudinal study of chronic drug and alcohol addicts in treatment at Beit T'shuvah Synagogue's recovery centre in California. The research asks: How does it work? What works for whom? What does spirituality have to do with it? A basic assumption is that addicts suffer from one (or more) structural splits: a split between affect and logic or a split between self and context. Effective treatment is construed as recovering integrity, mending the split(s).

The study reports an analysis of 28 semi-clinical interviews with male and female chronic drug addicts, mean age 34 (range 20–78). We analysed the interviews in terms of (i) structural splits, (ii) relational and contextual reasoning (RCR): recognising, reconciling and transcending apparently contradictory views and experiences; (iii) experiences of spiritual awakening. In terms of the trajectory from (i) to (ii) and (iii), we classified respondents as either ‘stuck in the split’ (chronic disintegration); or integrity recovered. Finally, based on the analysis of these data, we provide a theoretical roadmap from divided self to recovered integrity.

Acknowledgements

We thank the participants without whose collaboration this paper could not have been written, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version.