Spirituality religiosity promotes acceptance based responding and 12-step involvement.

BACKGROUND: Previous investigations have observed that spirituality/religiosity (S/R) is associated with enhanced 12-step involvement. However, relatively few studies have attempted to examine the mechanisms for this effect. For the present investigation, we examined whether acceptance-based responding (ABR) - awareness or acknowledgement of internal experiences that allows one to consider and perform potentially adaptive responses - accounted for the effect of S/R on 12-step self-help group involvement 2 years after a treatment episode.

METHODS: Data were collected as part of a multi-site treatment outcome study with 3698 substance-dependent male veterans recruited at baseline. Assessments were conducted at baseline, discharge, 1-year follow-up, and 2-year follow-up. We utilized structural equation modeling to examine the relationships among latent variables of S/R, ABR, and 12-step involvement over time.

RESULTS: In the final model, S/R was not directly related to 12-step involvement at 2-year follow-up. However, S/R predicted enhanced ABR at 1-year follow-up after accounting for discharge levels of ABR. In turn, ABR at 1-year follow-up predicted increased 12-step involvement at 2-year follow-up after accounting for discharge levels of 12-step involvement.

CONCLUSIONS: S/R promotes the use of post-treatment self-regulation skills that, in turn, directly contribute to ongoing 12-step self-help group involvement.

Research report; Carrico AW, Gifford EV, Moos RH. Spirituality religiosity promotes acceptance based responding and 12-step involvement Drug Alcohol Depend. 2007 Jun 15;89(1):66-73.

Conversations with God : An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1)

The concepts, principles, practices, and suggested 12 steps to recovery of the 12-step recovery approach to treating addictive disorders are examined.

Twelve-step recovery approaches are complex, multidimensional, biopsychosocial, and spiritual programs widely available in the United States and some other countries to people with addictive disorders, their family members, and significant others.

it has not been widely recognized that these programs are complex programs for living and address many issues other than alcohol and drug consumption.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Narcotics Anonymous (NA), Al-Anon, Alateen, and other 12-step recovery groups have flourished for the better part of the twentieth century, whereas many other treatment approaches have been tried and abandoned.

Although much discussion has centered on their spiritual emphasis, 12-step recovery approaches are clearly psychosocial recovery programs in which many important features entirely consistent with

• behavior modification,
• recent cognitive therapies,
• modern social learning theories,
• social psychology, and
• sociology are very much in evidence.

Although many people are aware that 12-step recovery approaches are designed to deal specifically with drinking and drug misuse, it has not been widely recognized that these programs are complex programs for living and address many issues other than alcohol and drug consumption.

By JACK Wallace. In: P.J. Ott, R.E. Tarter, and R.T. Ammerman (Eds.), Sourcebook On Substance Abuse: Etiology Epidemiology, Assessment, and treatment. Allyn & Bacon 1999.

Sourcebook on Substance Abuse: Etiology, Epidemiology, Assessment, and Treatment by Peggy J. Ott, Ralph E. Tarter, Robert T. Ammerman Read more about this title…

What About This Spiritual Awakening Thing?

The phrase “spiritual awakening,” found in the Twelfth Step and throughout A.A. literature, remains daunting to many beginners. For some, it conjures up a dramatic “conversion” experience - not an appealing idea to an alcoholic just coming off a drunk. To others, beaten down by years of steady drinking, it seems completely out of reach. But for those who persevere, ongoing sobriety almost invariably brings the realization that - in some wonderful and unexpected way - they have indeed experienced a spiritual change.

Spirituality, A.A. style, is the result of action. Step Twelve begins, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps. . .” (italics added), and in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (page 106), Bill W. describes what happens: “Maybe there are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people who have had them. But certainly each genuine one has something in common with all the others. . . .

When a man or woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had hitherto denied himself.”

AA - A Newsletter for Professionals, Fall 2003

‘God As We Understood Him’

The basic principles of Alcoholics Anonymous were worked out in the late 1930s and early ’40s, during what co-founder Bill W. often referred to as the Fellowship’s period of “trial and error.”

The founding members had been using six steps borrowed from the Oxford Groups, where many of them started out. Bill felt that more specific instructions would be better, and in the course of writing A.A.’s basic text, ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’, he expanded them to twelve.

But he was dealing with a group of newly sober drunks, and not surprisingly his new version met with spirited opposition. Even though the founding members were in many ways a homogeneous bunch (white, middle-class, almost exclusively male, and primarily Christian in background), they represented the full spectrum of opinion and belief. Bill tells us in ‘Alcoholic Anonymous Comes of Age’, a history of the Fellowship’s early years, that “the hot debate about the Twelve Steps and the book’s content was doubled, doubled and redoubled.

There were conservative, liberal, and radical viewpoints.” (page 162) Some thought the book ought to be Christian; others could accept the word “God” but were opposed to any other theological proposition. And the atheists and agnostics wanted to delete all references to God and take a psychological approach.

Bill concludes: “We finally began to talk about the possibility of compromise. . . . In Step Two we decided to describe God as a ‘Power greater than ourselves.’ In Steps Three and Eleven we inserted the words ‘God as we understood Him.’ From Step Seven he deleted the words ‘on our knees.’

And, as a lead-in sentence to all the steps we wrote these words: ‘Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery.’ A.A.’s Twelve Steps were to be suggestions only.” (ibid., page 167)

More than sixty years later, those crucial compromises, articulated after weeks of heated controversy, have made it possible for alcoholics of all faiths, or no faith at all, to embrace the A.A. program of recovery and find lasting sobriety.

AA - A Newsletter for Professionals Fall 2003

Subscribe to updates

A.A.’s 12-Steps - A Program of Action

A.A.’s Twelve Steps, which constitute its program of recovery, are in no way a statement of belief; they simply describe what the founding members did to get sober and stay sober.

They contain no new ideas: surrender, self-inventory, confession to someone outside ourselves, and some form of prayer and meditation are concepts found in spiritual movements throughout the world for thousands of years.

What the Steps do is frame these principles for the suffering alcoholic - sick, frightened, defiant, and grimly determined not to be told what to do or think or believe.

The Steps offer a detailed plan of action: admit that alcohol has you beaten, clean up your own life, admit your faults and do whatever it takes to change them, maintain a relationship with whatever or whoever outside of yourself can help keep you sober, and work with other alcoholics.

The same applies in a similar way to all 12-Step groups such as Al-anon, Alateen, ACOA, Gamblers Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous and Cocaine Anonymous.

AA - A Newsletter for Professionals Fall 2003

Subscribe to updates by RSS feed.

Helping other Alcoholics and Relapse

The specific mechanisms of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) that mobilize and sustain behavior change are poorly understood.

This study examined the relationship between helping other alcoholics in AA and relapse in the year following treatment for alcohol use disorders. Data were derived from a longitudinal investigation of the efficacy of three behavioral treatments for alcohol abuse and dependence (Project MATCH). Probabilities of time to alcohol relapse were calculated using Kaplan-Meier survival estimates. Proportional hazards regressions, with control for number of AA meetings attended, were conducted to determine whether the likelihood of relapse was lower for those who were helping other alcoholics.

those who were helping other alcoholics . . . were significantly less likely to relapse in the year following treatment

Age was the only demographic characteristic that distinguished participants involved in helping other alcoholics; those who were helping other alcoholics were, on average, 3 years older than those who were not helping alcoholics and were significantly less likely to relapse in the year following treatment, independent of the number of AA meetings attended.

Thus recovering alcoholics who help other alcoholics (mutual-help) maintain long-term sobriety after formal treatment are better able to maintain their own sobriety.

The authors conclude that clinicians who treat substance abuse disorders should encourage their clients to help other recovering alcoholics to stay sober.

Research report; Pagano ME, Friend KB, Tonigan JS, and Stout RL. Helping other alcoholics in alcoholics anonymous and drinking outcomes: Findings from Project MATCH. Journal of Studies on Alcohol 65(6):766-773, November 2004.

Spiritual But Never ‘Religious’

The A.A. Program - Spiritual But Never ‘Religious’

One of the most common misconceptions about Alcoholics Anonymous is that it is a religious organization. New members especially, confronted with A.A.’s emphasis on recovery from alcoholism by spiritual means, often translate “spiritual” as “religious” and shy away from meetings, avoiding what they perceive as a new and frightening set of beliefs.

By the time they walk into their first meeting, many alcoholics have lost what faith they might once have possessed; others have tried religion to stop drinking and failed; still others simply want nothing to do with it.

Yet with rare exceptions, once A.A. members achieve any length of sobriety, they have found a source of strength outside themselves - a Higher Power, by whatever name - and the stumbling block has disappeared.

FAQ - AA - A Newsletter for Professionals Fall 2003; www.aa.org

Regular news updates by RSS feed

• Alcohol Related Brain Injury
• Adolescent Children of Alcoholics
• Alcoholic jealousy
• Alcoholics Anonymous with Narcotics Anonymous
• ALCOHOLISM MYTHS
• Anti-craving Naltrexone Injection Reduces Drinking
• Brief-TSF Description
• Brief-TSF is Holistic Treatment
• Client Impressions About Alcoholics Anonymous
• Comparison of Addiction Treatment
• Counselor Characteristics
• Dentists and Alcohol and Drug Use
• Free Inhalant Abuse Education
• Inappropriate Treatment for Alcohol Withdrawal is Common
• Predictors of Relapse in Alcoholism
• Prescription Drug Overdose Becomes Big Killer
• Sleep, PTSD and Alcoholism
• Spiritual Assessment
• Sweet Tooth and Alcoholism
• Teen Drinking Leads to Risk of Alcoholism
• The Dry Drunk
• Thyroid Function in Depression and Alcohol Abuse
• Training; Domestic Violence and Substance Abuse
• TSF Description
• Twelve Steps to Recovery from Burnout
• Subscribe to BriefTSF by e-Mail

Prayer as medicine: how much have we learned?

SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH

Many people use prayer, and some studies have shown a positive association between prayer and improved health outcomes. This article explores four possible mechanisms by which prayer may lead to improved health.

While acknowledging the efficacy of prayer and recognizing the needs of patients, prayer, being a personal spiritual practice, cannot be prescribed, nor should it be used in place of medical care.

The spiritual search for meaning and hope in life is integral to human existence. This is particularly evident during times of personal stress and crisis. Recent census findings indicate that 74% of Australians and 96% of Americans believe in a higher power, and similar percentages claim some form of religious affiliation.1,2 Evidence also suggests that certain spiritual beliefs and the practice of prayer are associated with improved coping and better health outcomes.3-6 Although North Americans have been the predominant participants in most of the research available, the findings are relevant to the Australian experience, as they reflect a basic human desire for supernatural involvement in matters of health and wellbeing.

Research; Marek Jantos and Hosen Kiat. Medical Journal of Australia, 2007; 186: S51-S53

Subscribe to updates by RSS feed

The Spiritual Characteristics of New Zealanders Entering Treatment for Alcohol/Other Drug Dependence

This study describes the spiritual experiences, beliefs, and practices of New Zealanders entering intensive treatment for alcohol/ other drug dependence, and seeks to determine factors that influence spirituality in a clinical population. Ninety clients entering three residential treatment programs for alcohol and/or cannabis dependence were interviewed about their spiritual beliefs, behaviors, and experiences, using a broad selection of accepted measures.

A number of associations between aspects of spirituality and gender, ethnicity, age, employment, severity of dependence, and depression were found.

In particular, the more religiously active participants were less severely alcohol/other drug dependent, and depression was negatively associated with beliefs and activity related to 12-step participation.

Research; Michael P. Baker, J. Douglas Sellman, & Jacqueline Horn. The Spiritual Characteristics of New Zealanders Entering Treatment for Alcohol/Other Drug Dependence. Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Volume: 24 Issue: 4, 2006 Pages: 137 - 155

Regular news feed free subscription.