Religion, Spirituality and Addiction Recovery
Introduction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.40695Keywords:
spirituality, addiction, recovery, twelve step, non-religionAbstract
Religion, spirituality, non-religion, and the secular (Lee 2014, 2015) are unstable categories that are nonetheless routinely reified by academics, clinicians and practitioners alike, and positioned as fundamental to experiences of addiction recovery. For instance, addiction is often framed, dramatically, as a spiritual malady, yet, just as often, as simply a poor moral choice. While ideas associated with religion or spirituality play out differently in those contrasting diagnoses, the role of religion and spirituality in their aetiology is evident. We (Wendy Dossett and Liam Metcalf-White) argue that the categories of religion, spirituality, and non-religion, as they to relate to addiction recovery, need further analysis than they receive in the clinical literature. This literature frequently presents them as extra “technologies of the self ” (Foucault 1988); either functionally worthwhile or not (Szalavitz 2017); rather than as embedded in the very culture and discourses in which addiction and recovery are named and experienced. We argue for a focus on the latter as more productive for an understanding of the field.
References
Ammerman, N. T. 2014. Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199896448.001.0001
Asad, T. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Beckford, J. 2003. Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511520754
Cotter, R. C. 2015. “Without God yet Not Without Nuance: A Qualitative Study of Atheism and Non Religion among Scottish University Students.” In Atheist Identities – Spaces and Social Contexts, edited by G. L. Beaman and S. Tomlins, 171–194. London: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09602-5_11
Foucault, M. 1988. “Technologies of the Self.” In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, edited by L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hutton, 16–49. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Galen, L. W. and Kloet, J. D. (2011). “Mental well-being in the religious and the non-religious: Evidence for a curvilinear relationship.” Mental Health, Religion & Culture 14(7): 673–689. https://doi.org/10.1080/13674676.2010.510829
Houtman, D., and Aupers, S. 2007. “The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition: The Spread of Post-Christian Spirituality in Fourteen Western Countries.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 46(3): 305–320. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00360.x
Koenig, H. D. E. King, and V. B. Carson, 2012. Handbook of Religion and Health. Second edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lee, L. 2014. “Secular or Nonreligious? Investigating and Interpreting Generic ‘Not Religious’ Categories and Populations.” Religion 44(3): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2014.904035
———. 2015. Recognizing the Non-religious: Reimagining the Secular. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McCutcheon, R. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mercadante, L. A. 2014. Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual But Not Religious. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199931002.001.0001
Miller, M. 2015. Claiming Identity in the Study of Religion: Social and Rhetorical Techniques Examined. Sheffield: Equinox.
Pargament, K. I. 1997. The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice. New York: Guilford Press.
Royal College of Psychiatrists. 2020. “Spirituality and Mental Health.” https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/treatments-and-wellbeing/spirituality-and-mental-health
Szalavitz, M. 2017. Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction. New York: Picador.
Taves, A. 2016. Revelatory Events. Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691131016.001.0001
Watts, Galen. 2018. “Is Alcoholics Anonymous a Religion?” Religion Dispatches. 18 May. http://religiondispatches.org/is-alcoholics-a-religion/
