The spiritual dimension of addiction treatment

The spiritual dimension of our life
– a real “Cinderella” of our life, the most beautiful, diligent and fruitful, but still the most ignored and forgotten by many of us. You will visit probably hundreds of web pages related to alcohol or drug addiction, about the life of the addicts or about the suffer and pain that family feels when somebody dear, is almost dead because alcohol or drugs, but you will find less web pages which approach addiction from a spiritual point of view. This web page was meant to reveal you the importance of the spiritual life for any human, by in a certain way especially for addicts in their struggle to become sober.

The addict – seen as an spiritual emergency

The expression “spiritual emergency” is largely explained by the psychiatrist doctor Stanislav Grof in his book “Future Psychology”.
On short, the expression of spiritual emergency means for the author a mental state, a moment or a situation in somebody’s life, which is simultaneously a crisis and a good chance or possibility for that individual to raise up on a higher level his psychological self-awareness and spiritual state of conscience. From this point of view, alcohol or drug addictions are considered crises – because these are major and dangerous situations in life when the exit from the crisis follows two major choices: the first and the good one when the crisis experience help the individual to succeed and to move forward (achieving a better spiritual conscience) - doing a successful treatment for his addiction, and the other choice when that addict person struggles in addiction, between life and death, doing nothing or almost nothing to escape from addiction.

The alcohol or drug addict which successfully pass the psychological-spiritual crisis, proves in the end a better psycho-somatically state, a healthy mind and body, a healthy joy of life, a better and beneficial way to see, understand and to interact with people and the rest of the world.
For the “ex-addict”, now the sober one, the spiritual dimension of life starts to gain a higher importance and becomes to get closer and to open his heart to God, a God they never knew that exist: a good, a forgiving and a loving One.
Alcoholism and drug addiction are usually related with some mental disturbances. Addicts often live their life in a tremendous emotional suffering: they are depressed, live in permanent anxiety and tension, feeling guilty for something, having a very low self-esteem, striving to escape these miserable feelings.

From the psychoanalytical point of view (Freud), alcoholism, smoking, drug taking etc, are explained being an oral fixation, an unconscious need or desire to regress, to live the peace and feel the safety feeling that a baby feels when is feeded by his mother breast.

The main characteristic of alcoholics and drug addicts and the profound cause for the psycho-active substance abuse is not only the desire to regress and feel like a baby at his mother breast but also the profound desire to live the life in a peacefully and undisturbed way – like the peacefully life spent inside mother’s uterus.

There are a lot of evidences which show that in the background of the irresistible desire to use alcohol or drugs, lies the unknown and unrevealed need to plenitude or transcendence – in this case the emotion or the feeling of transcendence or unity with God is quite similar with the peaceful feeling felt by a baby at his mother breast.

Many addicts, being in recovery or in the rehabilitation time, talk about the continuously looking after an uncertain, unclear element or dimension from their life – they don’t know exactly what specific element is missing from their life, but they have the feeling that this “undiscovered” element can bring the fulfillment in their life. So, they are looking desperately this element everywhere, ending to search that “something” in: money, power, influence, promiscuous relationships, practicing exotic spiritual “exercises”, substance abuse and drug taking.
They also admit that no matter how much money, power, sex, drugs they have, these are not enough to fill up the emptiness of their heart; all of these are not enough to make them feel well as they want to be.
It is said that in medical emergency situations the patient needs medicines or pills, but we say in spiritual emergency situations people need the love from God.