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Spirituality and Addiction

A Mysterious Overlap Drug use and spirituality have a curiously intertwined history. Some world religions eschew or prohibit the use of certain drugs, for example, the banning of alcohol within Islam and Mormonism. The ancient aphorism spiritus contra spiritum implies a mutual incompatibility of alcohol and spirituality: each drives out the other. Substance dependence is, by diagnostic definition, a process whereby the drug progressively displaces previous priorities, relationships and values, and becomes the central concern of a person’s life—a modern analogue of idolatry. On the other hand, across diverse cultures, various substances have been used specifically as vehicles in the search for the sacred, among them lysergic acid derivatives, Psilocybe and several other genera of mushrooms, mescaline-containing cacti such as peyote, nightshade species such as Jimsonweed, and many others. Psychoactive drugs also occupy a place of honor in sacraments and rituals of some world religions, for example, wine in Judaism and Christianity and tobacco in Native American religion. It is as though, from a religious perspective, there is something significant about “spirits” and other psychoactive drugs. Avram Goldstein, whose classic work led to the understanding of endogenous opioids, also studied “thrills in music,” the common experience of awe and chills occurring at predictable moments in classical music. In a double-blind trial, he found that naloxone reliably suppressed these experiences, suggesting that they are mediated by endorphins. Furthermore, spirituality has long been regarded as having central importance in the treatment of and recovery from addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and related worldwide mutual-help programs conceptualize recovery through the “12 Steps” that are unambiguously spiritual in focus, emphasizing reliance on a Higher Power and the practice of prayer and meditation as means for promoting spiritual awakening and “conscious contact with God.”