16. Addiction: Is it a physical or spiritual condition?

By Tom O'Connell

During some of my lectures on the subject of addiction, one question has often come up: "Why do you emphasize the spiritual solution instead of the physical, in light of new scientific findings?"

One talk is called "Addiction: The Sacred Disease." In it I stress the spiritual roots of addiction. The other talk is titled "From Addiction Recovery to Discovery." In it I give considerable attention to our basic appetites as a key factor in addiction; then I stress the spiritual remedy. In each setting, some strong feelings surface about the "physical disease" approach to addiction. What about inheritance? What about a chemical cure?

In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, also called the Big Book, it is clearly stated that alcoholism involves physical allergy and mental obsession. The physical aspect is not ignored, but at the same time it isn't given top billing. "Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as an altruistic plane, we favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged." The goal of the hospitalization is to clear the brain.

In the book of readings called Twenty Four Hours A Day, this explanation is given: "If alcoholism were just a physical allergy, like asthma or hay fever, it would be easy for us, by taking a skin test with alcohol, to find out whether or not we're alcoholics. But alcoholism is not just a physical allergy; it's also a mental allergy or obsession."

This book, after describing the obsessive thinking and "mental compulsion" to  drink, cautions against certain misconceptions about alcoholism: "One mistake is that it can be cured by physical treatment only. The other mistake is that it can be cured by will-power only. Most alcoholics have tried both of these ways and have found that they don't work."  The solution? AA, with its spiritually based recovery program.

AA's Big Book, produced by the organization providing the most successful addiction recovery program in history, states, "The main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than his body." What about various approaches aimed at the mind? The book describes remedies alcoholics have tried, without success. It also says alcoholics are "absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge."

This conclusion is reached: "The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power."

Does AA deny the reality of a physical aspect to alcoholism? No. And neither do I. Addictive disease is holistic and multifactorial. It has many factors: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual. Addiction is complicated, not simple.

The spiritual approach, dealing with whole human beings and not with their component parts, does not ignore the physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects. But the strictly chemical approach, I believe, tries to oversimplify the problem.

There is a very pragmatic reason for using a spiritual approach to deal with the problem of addiction: "It works." Does it work for everybody? "Not necessarily. It only works if you work it."

So why not find a strictly scientific way to deal with addiction? Why not try to find the perfect pill? This subject will be explored further in a subsequent essay.

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