[Guest blog by SMART Facilitator Michael Werner]
One of the criticisms of SMART recovery has been the fact that we are not a religiously/spirituality-based program. In giving presentations to alcohol and drug counselors, I have had one even yell at me that I was going to kill people without religion in the program and ask, “Where is God in the program?” I answered, “Anywhere you want to put him/her.”
The issue of religion/spirituality is interesting to me because, from time to time, I taught advanced seminarians a class on the philosophy of religion. One of the first questions I ask is for people to describe what religion or spirituality is to them. Some of the answers might be “Oneness with God”, or Paul Tillich’s definition of, “That which ultimately grounds us”, or the Islamic scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s, “That which we ultimately rely on”, or “That which is emotionally evocative”, or “That which makes us feel at one with the universe,” or “A state of mind that lets us know the good, the true, and the beautiful”, or “An interior experience,” or conversely, a “practice of living." The range of definitions is amazing, and what is interesting is that they are radically different and, in many cases, stand in radical opposition to one another. They can be supernatural or naturalistic, rational or emotional, abstract thinking or applied practice, specific or general.
Definitions of spirituality can be seen as a Rorschach test for the person involved. However, people can be very ardent about their own definitions, and their lenses of reality are deeply held.
My point is that Spirituality can mean many things to people, and to assume we know what they are talking about is a grave error. We may often think we are talking about the same thing, but in fact, we may be poles apart. It’s not that spirituality doesn’t mean anything, but that it may mean too much and be a term of such wide-ranging, incommensurable meanings as to be a barrier rather than an effective tool for communication. Drilling down and seeking deeper, specific meanings and personal experiences is better.
In SMART, we don’t say spirituality is not important, but we will focus on the aspects of addictive behavior that center around choice and responsibility and leave no excuses, such as, “I’m not spiritual enough to quit yet.” I’ve heard that more than once. Ours is a no-excuses program where one's spirituality, or lack of it, will not be accepted as an excuse.
In fact, we may be putting the cart before the horse. When the “Enemy” voice is screaming urges at us to use substances or engage in negative behaviors, it seems it is hard to think about all the other high values in our lives, e.g. our family, our health, our economics, our religion, and our selves.
When we have made changes in our behavior, we find our minds are not on “automatic pilot” and consumed and subsumed by thoughts of our addiction. We are then free to pursue all the other essential things in our lives without the dominating urge to use them.
If religion or spirituality is important to you, then sober up so that you can clearly think about it. The same is true if you hold a naturalistic life stance and want to focus on good works in the here and now. Either way, choose to get the monkey off your back, take responsibility for your actions, and use the tools to overcome addictive behavior. Consequently, all the fullness of life’s choices will be available to you as the shackles of harmful thoughts and behaviors subside.
