What is the role of spirituality in the 12 step process of recovering from an addiction?
When most people hear the term "spirituality", they will confuse it with religion. If a person has had a very negative experience with religion, they're not going to want any part of this. From my point of view, spirituality is something that every human comes face-to-face with when they understand that they are in the midst of a mystery. And the mystery is that I am born, and I am going to die. In between, I am going to have all of these activities. Do I know what it all means or doesn't mean? No. But I am going to have to move through my life with a certain amount of faith and with a certain amount of hope that there is some meaning and purpose beyond all this. And even a person that is very secular is still going to realize, I have a limited amount of time on this earth. Whether I believe in an afterlife or I don't believe in an afterlife, the truth is I don't really know. It's almost like living becomes an act of faith. Realizing what those big questions are that every human has to answer for themselves, that is the realm of spirituality for where I'm coming from. There's no way that we can avoid them. Even if we avoid them up to the point of our deathbed, at some point we're going to have to wrestle with them.
