Thesis Statement: Adding the concept of religious spirituality to drug abuse treatment programs can help to decrease the amount of relapses by patients.
Introduction
In his examination of the effectiveness of current drug abuse treatment programs, Olmstead et al. (2012) noted that the rate of relapses among patients was quite high, often reaching 50% or more in some instances.
Particularly, this high rate of relapses was determined by Olmstead et al. (2012) as a direct result of a degree of failure on the part of drug abuse treatment programs to sufficiently address the primary reason why people turn to drugs and the lack of a sufficient method of relapse prevention once patients leave the program.
Reason for Failure
This failure to add some form of effective preventive method for relapse has been noted by various researchers to occur due to the fact that even the classification of external preventive programs has very little influence to ensure a sufficiently effective preventive capacity when the origin of the problem is the internal decision making process of patients.
Pearson et al. (2012) note that it is often the case that patients need to develop their own internal realization backed by psychological reasoning when it comes to abstaining from drug use.
What is necessary is the development of sufficiently strong internal reasoning mechanism and support system to ensure that the factors causing a particular individual to use drugs in the first place do not manifest.
Religious Spirituality as a Possible Solution
One possible method that has gained a considerable degree of progress in a variety of drug abuse treatment programs is the use of religious spirituality.
It was determined in the article “Patients consider spirituality and self-help approaches vital in TC” that religious spirituality can not only aid in the process of drug abuse rehabilitation but even act as a preventive measure to ensure that relapses do not occur (Dermatis, Guschwan, Galanter, & Blun 2004).
The reason behind its effectiveness is quite simple, religious spirituality acts as a means of altering individual’s perception in such a way that people view their life as not just their own but rather as the one connected to an almighty external creator (i.e. God).
Moreover, spirituality, in certain cases involving religious groups and organizations, helps instill a sense of belonging on patients within a religious community they are involved in, often acting as a support to prevent drug related relapses (Dermatis, Guschwan, Galanter, & Blun, 2004).
What you have to understand is that a great number of current drug abuse cases are often related to such feelings experienced by individuals as depression, worthlessness, and.
Such behavioral symptoms are often correlated with a lack of sufficient support and social interaction which makes the use of drugs to seem ideal to act as a form of escape from such situations.
By adding religious spirituality to drug abuse treatment programs, this creates the initial foundation due to which addicts could find an alternative to drugs abusing by immersing themselves in the feeling of being a part of community and belonging to a greater unit.
Such a solution would prevent the potential for patients to relapse since it addresses the internal psychological state in order to ensure that patients develop their own realization regarding the ill effects of drug use (Pearson et al. 2012).
As such, this paper has the assumption that adding the concept of religious spirituality to drug abuse treatment programs can help decrease the amount of relapses by patients.
References
Dermatis, H. Guschwan, M.T. Galanter, M. & Blun, G. (2004). Patients consider spirituality and self-help approaches vital in TCs. DATA: The Brown University Digest of Addiction Theory & Application, 23(7), 1-7. Web.
Olmstead, T. A., Abraham, A. J., Martino, S., & Roman, P. M. (2012). Counselor training in several evidence-based psychosocial addiction treatments in private US substance abuse treatment centers. Drug & Alcohol Dependence, 120(1-3), 149-154.
Pearson, F. S., Prendergast, M. L., Podus, D., Vazan, P., Greenwell, L., & Hamilton, Z. (2012). Meta-analyses of seven of the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s principles of drug addiction treatment. Journal Of Substance Abuse Treatment, 43(1), 1-11.