faith based rehabs - what in gods name is going on

7/29/2019 Faith Based Rehabs - What in Gods Name is Going On

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Page 1 of4Copyright: Shaun Shelly, 2013

www.addictioncapetown.blogspot.com

[email protected]

FAITH BASED REHABS:What, in Gods name, is

going on?By Shaun Shelly

While there has been a long history of

incorporating spiritual principles in recovery

and faith based organisations are common-

place ,with many of them doing a fine job, if

they are simply offering spiritual solutions to

addiction they are not offering addiction

treatment, and may, in fact, be doing more

harm than good. Any place that purports to be

a rehabilitation centre should be recovery

based, not faith based.

One of the pastors who volunteers time at the

non-profit organisation where I head up the

addiction program came to me and said:

Shaun, I have a problem. I no-longer feel

comfortable with many of the rehabs I have

been helping out at. What is going on there is

wrong, and I can no longer be part of it.

Hallelujah.

For a long time recovery andspirituality have been

inexorably linked. This is

understandable considering

that AA, and by association

12-step programs, were

influenced by the teachings

of the Christian Oxford

Group. Jung, whos ideas

also influenced the thinking of Bill W, the

founder of AA, coined the phrase Spritus

contra spiritum and described alcoholism in

one patient as the equivalent, on a low level,

of the spiritual thirst of our being for

wholeness, expressed in medieval language:

the union with God. The adoption of 12-Step

program into the professional treatment

setting in the form of the Minnesota Model

has seen the spiritual program becoming

the de facto cure for addictions.

Even this, however, is too much recovery for

some of the faith based addiction programs

we have in my local setting. Many

organisations purporting to offer a cure for

addiction believe that there is a pill that will

solve your problems: The Gos-PILL. For me

this is a bitter pill to swallow.

Let me state clearly that it is my position that

this thing we call addiction cannot be fully

explained without taking a spiritual

component into account. It is, in my and many

others opinion, a bio-psycho-social-spiritual

disorder. I also state for the record that I am a

Christian working for an organisation that has

a Christian ethos. I also believe that religion

and spiritual awakening can be powerful

motivators and agents of change, but to

present this as a cure for addiction is

morally wrong.

The Value of Religion in Recovery

Recently I attended an academic forum where

a clinical psychologist was presenting on the

psycho-dynamic theories of

addiction. After the talk one

of the attendees, a pure

scientist with a PhD who is

currently studying changes in

brain activity amongst

Methamphetamine users,

made the comment we

should send them all to

church. While this comment was made a

little tongue in cheek, there is some truth in

the concept that many addicts benefit fromreligious involvement. The cynical amongst us

may even describe the 12-step meetings as a

form of religious gathering.

In their paper Religion, Self-Regulation, and

Self-Control: Associations, Explanations, and

Implications, McCullough and Willoughby

I also believe that religion and

spiritual awakening can be

powerful motivators and agents

of change, but to present this as

a cure for addiction is morally

wrong.


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conclude that there is strong evidence that

religion is positively related to self control and

influences goal selection, pursuit and

management; there is reasonable support for

the idea that religious rituals such as prayer

and meditation can promote self-regulation;

and there is mixed support for the idea that

religion promotes self-monitoring.

Religion can therefore have a due role: (a) It

prescribes what people should strive for and

(b) it prescribes the path people should take

to reach these goals (Pargament, 1996). In

other words, it can help the individual find

meaning.

In terms of social support, by joining a

religious organisation, the recovering addict

can form new bonds and receive the social

integration and support that was often lacking

during the periods of addiction (Loewenthal,

1995).

I have also found that the Christian concepts

of being reborn, forgiveness and

repentance greatly facilitate the addict turned

Christian to heal the damage of their past as

well as catalyze the behavioural, cognitive and

psychodynamic changes essential to the

recovery process.

Without labouring the point further, I merely

want to point out that spiritual

enlightenment/conversion can be key to a

persons recovery, or can, to a lesser degree,

certainly help an individual attain their

recovery goals.

Where it Goes Wrong

While there are a number of faith based

recovery resources that successfully blend

religion and recovery, we have all heard the

horror stories that stem from faith based

programs gone wrong. In the local (South

African) context we have heard reports of

Islamic Rehabilitation Centres kidnapping

people off the street at the request of their

family, holding these people captive and

beating the soles of their feet (or should that

be souls).

One of the largest Christian facilities

guarantees a cure for addiction. I quote: Last

night I heard, the word came to me, about a

miracle cure for addiction100% cure,

guaranteed..How desperate are you for this

cure?.John Chapter 8 verse 36. Therefore

if the Son makes you free you shall be free

indeed. This particular centre also offers

correctional Intervention where The level

of discipline will be stricter than the centre

(e.g. military style inspections and parades) in

order to build team spirit, respect and self-control. This Centre was investigated in early

2001 for the deaths of two patients, or would

that be inmates.

These miraculous cures and false promises

all come with an overrider: You must join,

and stay in, our program at a fee. Yes, this

fee is often a lot less than other treatment

options, but then other treatment options

have to do things such as employ

professionals, and are trying to pay salariesfor a multi-disciplinary staff, rather than

support the owners life-style. This is

manipulation. It is taking advantage of

desperate families who would do anything to

save their children and it is morally

reprehensible.

Recently I have had to deal with some of the

fall-out of an organisation that was started by

an ex-addict who had had a Damascus Road

experience and was called by God to open asecondary care facility. This individual recently

relapsed causing significant therapeutic

damage to many of those living in the house,

and expecting his subordinates to assist him

in converting items in the facility to cash so he

could continue to fund his habit. When the


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money ran out, he simply rededicated

himself and its back to business.

And this is where it all goes wrong: there is no

accountability.

Accountability and TrainingSpeaking from the Christian perspective,

there has to be accountability. Many of these

faith based facilities have no accountability.

They use various loop-holes that are designed

to protect freedom of religion so as to be able

to deliver various services without

accountability. We see rehabs call themselves

all manner of things to avoid providing

professional services and avoid registration as

treatment centres and thus circumvent the

corresponding compliance criteria. In so doing

they also avoid being accountable to

professional bodies. And because it is a

ministry and calling from God many are

simply too trusting to ask

the difficult questions, so

they cleverly avoid

accountability to the very

people that pay them to

provide recovery services.

Most of the program

leaders that I have

encountered in such facilities have no

personal accountability either. They are

usually recovering addicts who use their

personal recovery experience as the sum

total of their research. People, surviving

cancer does not qualify you as an Oncologist!

If God has called you to turn your tribulation

into triumph and help others, then walk the

walk. If helping people recover is your truepurpose and calling then you wont mind

working under those who are more

experienced and qualified. You wont mind

studying for a few years and working for a

pittance. You wont mind living in the real

world before teaching others how to. And you

wont mind being accountable to a

professional body, the standards set for

evidence based treatment, your church, your

peers, and most importantly, those in your

care.

More Harm than Go(o)d

Addicts and their families are a vulnerable

population. They are desperate for recovery.

Often they have tried many things that

havent, for various reasons, worked. That is

why we see the proliferation of expensive and

untested cures. Think Ibogaine. The

particular harm done by these fundamentalist

religious approaches is that they may laden

the addict with an undue sense of shame.

Shame has been shown to increase incidences

and severity of relapse as well as have

implications on health (Tracy & Randles,

2013). The typically confrontational approach

is also in direct opposition to evidence based

techniques such as motivational interviewing.

This all goes to making valid

treatment approaches less

attractive to the addict and

their family.

Another factor is that these

programs tend to advocatelong-term treatment, and are

often only effective while the

individual is in the program. They have

nothing to carry home and self-efficacy is

not what the program is designed to foster.

There is often the on-going financial and

emotional abuse that the leader exerts on his

converts, fuelled by the inappropriate one-

sided relationship that has been fostered. In

these facilities it is certainly Personality

before Principles. I find it amazing that the

self-appointed experts would often not begin

to measure up to the standards they expect

from their followers/clients and yet they hold

themselves up as the standard.

These cultish organisations give religion and

recovery a bad name, and make it even more

They are usually recovering

addicts who use their personal

recovery experience as the

sum total of their research.

People, surviving cancer does

not qualify you as an Oncologist!


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difficult for those suffering with addictive

orders to find true recovery after exposure to

these damaging environments. These facilities

begin to look a lot like churches with captive

congregations and 7-day a week services.

What should Legitimate Faith Based Facilities

be Offering?

We all have a right to religious freedom. As I

have stated, I believe that a spiritual

awakening is key to many peoples recovery,

but it is not the only way to finding recovery

from addiction disorders. In his useful book

The Biblical Link to Addiction, Colin Garnett

views addiction from a Christian Biblical

understanding, and even from this point of

view he suggests that Alcoholism needs

Christianity like the Church needs therapy

and continues Therefore the danger is that

even if we assume the best of Christian

ministers to be fully conversant with

counselling people through the theological

themes highlighted, their best theology is still

going to leave people wanting.

Addiction is an exceedingly difficult disorder

to treat. Rule number one of effective

addiction treatment is that there is no one

size fits all cure. Because of the complex

interactions of mind, body, soul and

environment that lead to addiction, addicts

require an equally complex mix of treatment

interventions. While there are some who will

benefit from a purely religious or spiritual

experience, this should not be the focus of a

professional treatment setting this type of

spiritual awakening, as is the 12-step program

- is free to anyone who joins a church, and

those who commercialise this should beapproached with caution.

Any good treatment program, even if it is

faith based, should include qualified

professionals who are using research based

therapies or interventions that stand the test

of science.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that before

being faith based, any addiction treatment

centre needs to be recovery based.

Bibliography

Garnett, C. (2011). The Biblical Link to

Addictions. AuthorHouse.

Loewenthal, K. (1995). Mental Health and

Religion. London: Chapman&Hall.

Mc Cullough, M., & Willoughby, B. (2009).

Religion, Self Regulation andSelf-Control:

Associations, Explanations and Implications.

Psychological Bulletin , 1:69-93.

Mental Health Foundation of UK. (2006). The

Impact of Spirituality on Mental Health: A

Review of the Literature. London: Mental

Health Foundation.

Pardini, D., Plante, T., Sherman, A., & Stump,

J. (2000). Religious faith and spirituality in

substance abuse recovery: determining the

mental health benefits.Journal of Sustance

Abuse Treatment, 19(4):347-54.

Pargament, K. (1996). Religious Methods of

Coping: Resources for the Conservation and

Transformation of Significance. In E.

Shafranske, Religion and the Clinical Practice

of Psychology(pp. 215-234). Washington DC:

APA.

Sremac, S. (2010). Addiction, Narrative and

Spirituality: Theoretical-Methodological

Approaches and Overview.Academia.edu ,

255-273.

Tracy, J., & Randles, D. (2013). Nonverbal

Displays of Shame Predict Relapse andDeclining Health in Recovering Alcoholics.

Clinical Psychological Science .

faith based rehabs - what in gods name is going on

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