Facts on the role religion plays in addiction recovery
By Abigail Gadd Pixton
HOW 12-STEP PROGRAMS CAME TO BE FAITH BASED
(note: watch movie “My Name is Bill W.”)
For centuries, people experiencing a substance use disorder, a recognized medical brain ailment, have dealt with the guilt and shame that the irreparable damage of addiction can bring. Strangers, friends, and loved ones who have not experienced substance abuse will often try to help, but fall short of the experience needed to overcome addiction. Addiction claims victims from every social class, race, religion, gender, and generation.
In the early 1930s, a once successful Wall-Street broker named Bill Wilson found himself facing the overwhelming feeling of helplessness. He was an alcoholic. He checked himself into several hospitals seeking help with no progress. It wasn’t until he was introduced to the Oxford Group, a North American coalition of members who overcame addiction through the use of prayer, meditation, and personal inventory, that Wilson realized what was missing in his path to recovery. He needed to show accountability to a higher power. A few years later, Wilson developed the 12-step plan that Alcoholics Anonymous and other addiction recovery entities around the globe still use to support members.
Many participants wonder why acknowledgement of a higher power is necessary in overcoming addiction, especially if a participant is atheist or agnostic. Fortunately, for addicts who fall into these categories, Alcoholics Anonymous doesn’t require a belief in God, only that a higher power exists. Some higher powers that an atheist might understand are Mother Nature, the Universe, Karma, or humanity as a whole. A higher power is necessary to include in the 12-steps because it offers an omniscient force with which to be accountable.
Dr. Jason Brooks from Vertava Health explains the purpose of including spiritual elements in the program. “During active addiction, your purpose in life was to feed your disease, but spirituality can restore your self-worth and give you a new sense of purpose,” Brooks writes. The evidence that religion and spirituality helps an addict regain self-worth is overwhelming. More than 80% of clients who experienced a spiritual awakening during substance abuse treatment and recovery were completely abstinent at a one-year follow-up compared with 55% of non-spiritually-awakened clients.
Here are the 12 steps of the program:
1. We admit that we are powerless over alcohol—that our lives have become
unmanageable.
2. We’ve come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to
sanity.
3. We make the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understand Him.
4. We have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly ask Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We’ve made a list of all persons we have harmed, and have become willing to make
amends to them all.
9. We’ve made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do
so would injure them or others.
10. We continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong promptly
admit it.
11. We’ve sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God as we understand Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and
the power to carry that out.
12. We have had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we have tried to
carry this message to other addicts, and have practiced these principles in all our
affairs.
For more on the 12 steps, visit aa.org. For information on substance use and recovery, contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357), (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) or TTY: 1-800-487-4889, a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service.
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