The Alcoholic Spiritual Experience
On Thursday, Beliefnet posted a column by Amy Cunningham that began:

I am grateful for all the relationships I have had with alcoholics.

They’ve often been painful but… always, the connection has left me with an appreciation for the complexities of human character, and an awareness of the fear some sensitive people feel.

She then recommends an online paper by relapse guru Terence Gorski on the subject of spirituality and relapse. Here's one paragraph she quotes that shows one of the problems we humans in general have with our spiritual-based wish systems:

When God doesn't [do what the person wants], they sink into a deep existential depression and say, "Since God won't fix my life, I might as well get drunk."

…An example of this is the man who turned $60,000 worth of debt incurred from his cocaine addiction over to his higher power. He was absolutely shocked when his higher power turned his debts over to a collection agency.

Gorski has always been on the cutting edge of relapse prevention and his insights are important. Spirituality is truly the key to recovery and relapse prevention. The problems often arise for the reason mentioned above- expecting God to do for us what we should do for ourselves and expecting to be able to do for ourselves what only God is able to do. The other is to get it all mixed up with religious ritual.

Neither works well, in reality. The result is often the relapse that sends the addict back into his/her active using. That is also something that the church has a hard time understanding as well. The unfortunate equating of church (religion) and spirituality will often get in the way of recovery. Only when the church (religion) sees it has no corner on God's ways of working with people can it begin to play a more important part in recovery.