Although there are some empirical data about the spirituality and religiousness of persons recovering from alcohol dependence, which spiritual and religious domains change during recovery, when they change, or how critical they are to recovery are unknown. The long-term objectives of this research are to better characterize the dimensions and relevance of changes in spirituality that may occur over the three years following treatment entry for alcohol dependence.
The specific aims of this research are to investigate if (1) alcoholics' spiritual and religious beliefs, practices, experiences, and coping strategies at treatment intake change during the subsequent three years, (2) involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous enhances these changes, (3) intake and intervening values on spiritual and religious measures predict sobriety over time, (4) these variables at intake and intervening periods are associated with individual characteristics (e.g., negative religious history, demographics, social support, and clinical characteristics), and (5) qualitative data on alcoholics' perceptions and experiences of spirituality and religion validate and enrich findings. The significance to health is a greater understanding of the role spirituality and religiousness may play in recovery, which may guide clinical efforts so these issues will be addressed more directly and specifically, with respect for individual differences. The work will guide future research on spirituality's role in recovery, the types of spiritual and religious change that may occur, variations in rates of change, and identifying those for whom spiritual change may be important. The research design is a three-year longitudinal quantitative and qualitative survey of 320 alcoholics entering treatment at 3 sites. Interview data will be collected every six months and will include qualitative questions on alcohol use, recovery efforts, and experiences of spirituality and religion. Standardized measures of spiritual and religious experiences, forgiveness, beliefs, practices, and coping will be used, with measures of drinking behaviors, alcoholism severity, psychiatric severity, psychosocial functioning, personality, treatment exposure, AA involvement, and demographic variables. Quantitative analysis of change in spiritual domains will use repeated measures analysis of variance with time and site as covariates, duplicated with other correlates, including alcohol use and AA involvement. Content and narrative analysis will identify themes and narratives in the qualitative data.
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