Drug Rehab Center

By Geoff Thompson, MA, CCC
Sunshine Coast Health Center Program Director

University of Windsor professor Dr. Ken Hart and I have been invited to contribute a chapter on spirituality and recovery for a new book that will be published by the American Psychological Association. Dr. Hart is one of Canada’s foremost researchers in addiction.

Much of our job will be to get a handle on this thing called “spirituality.” When the experts try to figure out what it means, they inevitably end up using words like “multidimensional” and “complex”; not all the helpful but, then, it’s a tough idea to put in everyday language.

Here are three of hundreds of definitions: “Caring for others, seeking goodness and truth, transcendence….”; “A focus on the transcendent….”; “the search for existential meaning.” Most people would struggle with these definitions. What does “goodness and truth” mean exactly? I’m pretty sure Adolph Hitler would have an idea of “goodness” much different than we would. What does it mean to “focus on the transcendent”? It seems to me that focusing on the transcendent is exactly what a lot of addicts do: think of Hunter S. Thompson or Thomas De Quincey or, of course, Bill Wilson (‘the alcoholic is the fellow trying to get his religion from a bottle’). And “search for existential meaning”? The great atheistic writer, Eugene O’Neill, searched for an existential meaning. But, then, so did the great Christian theologian, Paul Tillich. Who’s right?

Of course, this is likely why ‘spirituality’ is such a useful term: vague enough to cover very different experiences.

But Dr. Hart and I still have to write something down.

Most addiction experts agree that spirituality is somehow linked with good recovery. Every time we study recovering addicts we discover that an increase in spirituality is correlated with less drug use and higher quality of life. We still don’t know precisely why this is—at least not from a psychological view—but we do know that we keep getting the same results in our studies. Harry Tiebout, Bill Wilson’s psychoanalyst, believed that when the self-centered addict came to believe in a higher power, then, by definition, he could no longer believe that he was the center of the universe. Addiction researcher Scott Tonigan has a different idea. He sees ‘spirituality’ as “a distinctive, potentially creative and universal dimension of human experience…,” which is needed to find the transformative change required for recovery. And these are just two versions of hundreds.

In this article, we’ll look at how some of the experts deal with this spirituality thing. Not that we’ll find any answer…but perhaps they’ll offer a clue.

Synchronicity

At our Edmonton alumni reunion in June, we spent the afternoon talking about those things in life that seem more than coincidence. One alumnus told us about a situation where he was driving past a house at the time it was on fire. He rushed out and helped extinguish it. The grateful owner invited him to supper the next day. At supper, the owner offered him a great job. Another alumnus had noticed enough coincidences that he believed that there must be some hidden hands at work for him. Another described a situation in which his sponsor told him something during the day; he rented a movie later in which one of the characters said the exact same thing. It was as if someone were trying to tell him something.

We talked about what these ‘coincidences’ meant. Several of the alumni thought that “something” was telling them something. One who said he didn’t believe in the traditional idea of God said that he thought that perhaps some force was watching over him. Another said it was God.

These ‘coincidences’ happen all the time to people in recovery (and to some in active addiction, by the way).

In psychology, we have a fancy word for these events: synchronicity. We still don’t understand it. I do, however, have a book in my library called Synchronicity, which states that there is a logic to these ‘coincidences’.

Unseen Helping Hands

We talked in the April 2008 online program about the great mythology expert, Joseph Campbell. If you’re interested, there’s a famous series of television interviews between Campbell and Bill Moyers of PBS, which will be available at your local library.

Campbell is the one who coined the phrase “Follow your bliss.” He said that when you pursue a life that you truly want, all sorts of apparently magical things will start happening. The way he phrased it was that you will feel as if “hidden hands” are helping you in your life. Here’s an excerpt from those interviews:

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time – namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

Campbell has personal experience in following his bliss. In fact, he quit school because his professors were not happy with his particular interest in mythology. So, he went off on his own quest and published a wagonload of books.

Positive Living

In the past two weeks, in our work with alumni participating in the Online Support Program, we have been dancing around spirituality, without being too specific. We noted two famous descriptions of life that seem to be linked to good recovery: noticing ‘coincidences’ (what psychology calls ‘synchronicity’) and Joseph Campbell’s famous comments on feeling as if helping hands are guiding you along your life.

But there do seem to be some common elements to spirituality, no matter what you think ‘spirituality’ means. One common element is that the experience is positive. However we define spirituality, it always seems to be a good thing—a better way of living.

People who say they are ‘spiritual’ tell us that they have found serenity, peace of mind, comfort in their own skin, a sense of belonging. And they usually say their family relationships are better, they have fewer physical problems such as headaches, they are excited to get up in the morning. And Sunshine Coast’s preliminary research findings on our alumni’s progress in recovery indicate that those who say they are pursuing ‘spirituality’ report much greater quality of life.

Hope and Faith (that things will get better)

Most of those in early recovery still have a lot of ‘wreckage from the past’ to deal with. Some have large debts to pay off, some have family relationships to mend, some have to deal with problems at work, some have medical issues as a result of their addiction, and so on.

This is usually not a pleasant experience. All the guilt over what we’ve done to family and fears of their rejection, dealing with the government tax bureau or legal matters, going back to the dentist for some of us, and so on, are usually not something we look forward to. And of course, there’s all those cravings and triggers to deal with. It’s even common to hear in the program that the first year of recovery is easy; it’s the second year that’s tough. (Not exactly an inspiring message, which does not have to be true, by the way.)

So, what how do we make it through this time? Researchers have concluded that hope and faith that things will work out is the key. For some alumni this hope and faith comes from witnessing those with long-term recovery who are happy, who say that ‘things get better’. And if you are into positive affirmations, the best one is to look into a mirror and tell yourself: ‘I may not like what I see now, but I have hope and faith that I will in the future’. (This is a much better tactic than Saturday Night Live’s Stuart Smalley who tried to convince himself, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”)

Perhaps this hope and faith is a good part of the power of spirituality. Those who feel that there is ‘something’ bigger than they are can hold on to hope and faith that this ‘something’ may know what’s happening even if the person in early recovery doesn’t. It may interest you to know that research has shown that hope and faith are consistently related to good recovery.

A Way of Life

One more of those common elements that people talk about when they describe ‘spirituality’ is that it is not a compartmentalized part of life. People are not ‘being spiritual’ for a moment or an hour, and then not being spiritual. Rather, this ‘spirituality’ thing seems to influence most of their lives—except, perhaps, during a root canal. But, then again, even there. 

Whatever ‘spirituality’ is, it informs all aspects of life. The Native peoples talk about being unified with nature and this forms the basis for living. The Dalai Lama describes his connection with the ‘hidden’ world as being a basis for his actions in everyday life. Many people in recovery describe their connection with their higher power as influencing how they treat others, how they deal with their own imperfections, how they make sense of their suffering.

Perhaps part of this is regaining a sense of awe and wonder at the world. One of the sad things about modern life is that we seem to have lost the enchantment of daily things that we once had as children. Spiritual masters often tell us that we look but we don’t see. Others tell us to “Wake up!” to the world around us. It is a human thing that we often don’t pay attention to how precious life can be until we hit a crisis, such as the death of a loved one or a serious medical diagnosis or—sometimes—a drug overdose.

But one can only ‘see’ by learning how to look, which is the subject of many spirituality books in Chapter’s or Cole’s self-help bookshelves. And learning how to see demands that we recognize that underlying everyday things is some ‘hidden’ power.

Tags: Bill Moyers, Dalai Lama, follow your bliss, Hunter S. Thompson, Joseph Campbell, Ken Hart, Spirituality Definition, Synchronicity, Thomas De Quincey

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Exploring Addiction, Geoff Thompson, On Line Support - Alumni, spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.