Is there a correlation between religiosity and addictive personality?

Factual Questions
1

I apologise for the possibly-provocative title of this thread, but I am constrained by the character limits. I am not attempting to say that addictive people are all religious, or that religious beliefs are akin to any addictive behavior of your choice.

My question, in a nutshell, is this: have any studies been done measuring a possible correlation between religion and addictive personalities?

I first considered this when two of my friends (with addictive personalities both) got hooked on religion. The parallels of the way they both behaved concerning their newfound faith and the way they sought confort in their previous addictions (sex and alcohol, respectively) made me wonder. I then started considering programs such as AA, which serves addicts and is explicitly religious. I also considered why some religious folk have a problem with pornography addiciton. In particular, I wondered why pornography was considered a general soceital scourge akin to drugs, when almost everyone I knew partook of it and had no resulting problems. Could, I speculated, those people who set up anti-pornography-addiction websites be seeing a lot of people with a predisposition to addiction, and as such over-represent the ills of porn in the effects they saw?

I recognize that this is a rather difficult question to ask without coming off as insulting. Again, I’m not speculating as to any root cause, and I’m not trying to insult religion here. I’m just wondering if any such correlation has been measured.

2

Cite that AA is explicitly religious?

This old agnostic/skeptic has fit comfortably within the spirituality of my chosen AA groups for many long years now, and have not noted injection of religion by AA as a whole. Some members may bring it with them, but in the groups I frequent they are not allowed to turn meetings into vehicles promoting religion.

3

This doesn’t qualify?

"These are the original Twelve Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous. [1]

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

4

I’ve noticed this too and wondered about but been reluctant to bring it up here because someone is bound to get angry.

A LOT of former alcoholics and/or drug users seem become “addicted” to religion during or after recovery.

5

AA advocates each person find “a power greater than themselves”. It has no credo, recommends no churches, synagogues or mosques, requires no tithes, has no commandments, and the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

If that’s explicitly religious, I wish more churches acted that way.

Granted, loaded terms like God and prayer get thrown out a lot, but AA developed when those were the default settings in American society, and AA was quite remarkable at the time for de-emphasizing the strictly religious aspect of most programs directed at helping alcoholics.

These days, the emphasis from AA is on finding something outside of oneself where one can strive for the greater good, while working to stay sober.

Now while many AA people do opt to become heavily involved in their churches, quite a few do not. I can speak only anecdotally, but I recognize religious zealotry when I see it, and I have rarely noticed it among the dozens of close friends I’ve made in AA.

And yes, there are AA groups I won’t go to because they’re full of the ‘bible thumpers’ who push their brand of religion via AA. This violates the long form of AA’s Tradition 10.

The above reflects my opinions only, based on over 20 years in AA, during which I’ve been both fairly hostile to, and more tolerant of, religion and AA’s use of the word “God”. They also reflect a lot of reading of official AA material. Will other AA’ers agree? Many won’t, but many will too. We’re a contentious lot.

But to get back to the spirit of the OP, I guess I’d say that most addicts and alcoholics use their drug of choice to fill a void. Studies and surveys have indicated that chemically dependent people tend to have a lot of problems with anxiety, fear, hoplessness, and depression. So do lots of normal people. But the trap for the addict is that their drug relieves these symptoms very nicely. For a while.

Once the drug is removed, most addicts will want to find something else which helps them cope. Religion is a popular option. I personally prefer the company of my fellow recovering addicts to help me continue my recovery.

6

So who is the “power greater than themselves” that an atheist AAer turns to for assistance? I’m not trying to be snarky, it’s seriously something I’ve never understood.

I could say the same thing about a dozen neopagan religions, as well as UU, in it’s most liberal incarnations. Well, except the stop drinking part.

7

The AA program does not require any more specific explanation of the “higher power” beyond accepting the fact that such a power greater than yourself exists. I am reminded of the recovering alcoholic who chose the Kmart sign as his higher power. Every day he walked by that sign, he repeated out loud what it meant to him: Keep My Ass Right Today. That’s the beauty of the program, it is up to each individual to determine what their higher power is, and it need not be an omnipotent, supernatural being.

8

I don’t recognize any “higher power” whatesoever. Where would that leave me? It always seems to me that saying you can define your own higher power is just begging the question.

I’m also unaware of any other aspect of medicine which would say that appeals to the supernatural are valid forms of treatment for a disease.

9

What does recognizing a higher power necessarily have to do with the supernatural? One does not follow the other.

Come now. Gravity is greater than you, unless you have powers beyond those of mortal men. I have neighbors that are more powerful than me.

Right where you wish to be. It’s up to you.

10

I opened a GD thread to discuss AA in more detail here .

11

I do know several former drug abusers who are now extremely religious. No alcoholics that I can think of, though.
Here in the Dominican Republic the main drug rehabilitation centres, “Hogares Crea”, founded in Puerto Rico and active in several Latin American countries, use religion as a motivation factor for getting addicts off drugs.

Private rehab clinics also offer faith-based programmes, and no-one questions the wisdom of this approach. I got the impression that it’s difficult to find any other approach.

I don’t know if “correlation” is the correct term, though. There may be a tendency among addicts to need a psychological substitute of some sort once they’ve overcome their addiction, but is anyone claiming that religious people are at a greater risk of becoming drug addicts?

I’ll leave my AA-related comment for the new thread.

12

On a less incendiary note, churches are generally welcoming places where the social activity doesn’t center around alcohol. Much other adult socializing does center around alcohol.

I can think of one recovering alcoholic among the two congregations I have known well. No doubt there have been more, I don’t get into everybody’s business, but it doesn’t seem to be any kind of overwhelming majority.

In addition to the social aspect, maybe what you’ve identified is a tendency to go to extremes, whether with alcohohol, drugs, or religion.

13

Obviously. :smiley:

14

Right, but he has as much gravity as a being his size is expected to have, not more, not less. How is gravity supposed to help with alcoholism? I’m fairly sure any alcoholic who realizes they are an alcoholic and seeks help already understands that there is a power greater than themselves – alcohol. I think the intent is that there is a sentient power greater than them, and that’s about as religious as you can get.

15

You are mistaken.

16

I used a small piece of quartz as my higher power; the order and regularity found in the structure of quartz demonstrated to me that order could be found in (my) chaotic world. I didn’t pray to quartz nor did I offer quartz any sacrifices, nor am I speaking of our SDMB member, Quartz.

17

A good friend of mine who used to be an alcoholic tried AA and claimed that they very explicitly required members to acknowledge a “higher being”. Since he couldn’t, he dropped out. He eventually spent a month at a “dryout camp” and spent the subsequent ten years dry before taking up social drinking. I will attest that he limits himself to one or two drinks a day. Maybe that is an addiction, but it is very limited.

I am an atheist–I can’t imagine what it is like to believe in god. But I used to be addicted to tobacco and am still addicted to too much food. On the other hand, alcohol leaves me unmoved and I have never tried controlled substances.

18

I don’t know that you’ll get a GQ-type answer here, a lot of this is just going to be opinion. But I would also submit the possibility that humans crave a transcendental, sacred experience as part of a grounded, centered life. For many people, going to a holy place and chanting out of a sacred book is enough to produce such an experience. Others of us are unable to achieve such an experience that way, and seek other things to fill it… such as pain, sexuality, intensive spiritual practices, and certain drugs. Some are able to find a beneficial experience there, some are diverted into pure chemical addiction or entertainment. When this quest becomes destructive they are usually treated as an “addict” and are referred to AA (or a similar 12-step program). If we assume that the initial path to addiction was indeed to fill a certain spiritual void, then it is unsurprising that there is an undeniable spiritual undercurrent to AA and other such 12-step programs.

Indeed I think 12-step recovery programs can become pseudo-religions or even cults in themselves. I know addicts who have conquered their addictions in ways that were not 12-step orthodox, and been shunned as a result. In particular I’m talking about ibogaine therapy, which eliminates opiate withdrawal in a matter of hours, as well as interrupting various other forms of addiction. If it were widely adopted it could spell the end of 12-step groups as we know it, and understandably the 12-steppers are extremly unsupportive and even hostile to people who have sought this cure. The 12-step plan becomes a surrogate drug, and just as their original drug, they’re terrified to give it up.

19

Ok. so. All I have seen presented here is that for those AA members who derive value from “faith in a higher power”, or prayer, or something along those lines, those members have a spiritual aspect to their personalities.

I don’t see the argument that just because spiritual AA members are addicts, that all addicts are spiritual…

Seems to me that those AA addicts are a subset of all addicts in general.

Is there a special reason to pick on religion for this one?

20

Mind you, this is purely from personal observing experience:

I’ve had frends, as well as a couple of relatives, who have/had “addictive” personalities. Even when in recovery, that part of the brain that governs pleasure/reward is still very active. Take away the primary damaging addiction, and their minds needed something – anything – to take its place.

Some found religion. whether on their own or through an anonymous organization. As other posters have mentioned, it’s one of the few adult-oriented areas where the primary addiction isn’t welcomed. One friend found that that he got a similar “high” from totally immersing himself in Bible study, meeting others on the same path (“Hey, there’s somebody who knows exactly what I’m going through!”), and joining various committees to take his mind off the primary addiction.

Those who didn’t find religion found other ways – some good, others destructive. Some substituted one damaging addiction for another. Others went completely cold-turkey on their own and succeeded, while some treaded the fine line between the two.

One thing those in recovery need is support. Sometimes family and friends aren’t enough or can’t provide the support needed. A church – and, in a greater sense, a religion/belief system/what-have-you – is inherently supportive to whoever enters through their doors. There’s an element of safety there. To a recovering addict, that’s very important.