How to use spiritual power

In this section, I encourage you to use spirituality as the most powerful force in recovery. Alcoholics Anonymous says that alcoholism is a spiritual problem with a spiritual solution. Alcohol has always said to the patient, "Good choice!" It has done this with such power and force that the patient has become addicted to this feeling.

Now you need to help the patient find something that feels better than alcohol. You need some experience that more powerfully says, "Good choice." There is nothing that can do this more powerfully than God. I guarantee you that if patients walk into the presence of God, they will feel so much better that they will follow that feeling anywhere. God's presence is better than any experience you can imagine. Addicts need something better than alcohol to deal with stress.

They need to find greater peace, greater love, and greater power or they will go back to alcohol. Many of you know this already, and many of you are suspicious of spiritual beliefs. I encourage you to take a look around you. There is a national trend to seek God.

Table 2.1

Professional Principles for Dealing with Spirituality

• Maintain respect for the patient's belief system.
  
• Obtain information about the patient's religious and spiritual beliefs.
  
• Develop empathy for the patient's belief system.
  
• Do not impose your own religious or spiritual beliefs.
  
• Educate the patient about the 12-step concept of a higher power.

Benefits of Spirituality

• Humility.
  
• Inner strength.
  
• A sense of meaning and purpose to life.
  
• A feeling of acceptance, love, and tolerance.
  
• Peace.
  
• Harmony.

Most national magazines and television shows talk about God. After the tragedy of September 11, 2001, people were praying on every television channel. All across America there is a new growth in spirituality (Gallup & Jones, 2000).

Even science is becoming interested in religion and spirituality because studies consistently show that patients who use religion and spirituality get better quicker and live longer. In the 1990s, the research on religion and spirituality began to mature. Research studies were launched within the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Special issues and sections focusing on research on spirituality and health have appeared in scientific journals, including the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (Underwood-Gordon, Peters, Bijur, & Fuhrer, 1997), the Annals of Behavioral Medicine (Mills, 2002), the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice (Lucken, 2000), the Journal of Health Psychology (Thoresen & Harris, 1999), the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy ("Spirituality and Family Therapy," 2000), Psycho-Oncology (Russak, Lederberg, & Fitchett, 1999), Twin Research (Kirk & Martin, 1999), and American Psychologist (W. R. Miller & Thoresen, 2003). Professional principles for dealing with spirituality and benefits of spirituality are summarized in Table 2.1.