Five Ways Spiritual Addiction Treatment Supports Recovery

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Spiritual addiction treatment is an essential part of an effective substance abuse care plan, providing key support and reinforcement for long-term recovery.

Engagement in spiritual activities during drug and alcohol addiction treatment is directly related to improvements in treatment engagement and long-term recovery.

Does Spiritual Addiction Treatment Strengthen Sobriety?

Key to a successful spiritual care approach is understanding that spirituality reaches beyond religious traditions and focuses on building hope, self-worth, and purpose. Regardless of a patent’s belief system, an effective spiritual care team will help the patient incorporate it into the treatment plan and build relevant recovery skills.

Higher levels of spirituality have a protective effect against addiction relapse and is associated with increased length of sobriety. Involvement in spiritually-based programs and fellowships during the recovery process, such as 12 Step and AA/NA, are also strongly linked to successful recovery behaviors and outcomes.

Five ways a spiritual care program can help a patient’s sobriety include:

1. Healing Through Forgiveness

Spiritual care during substance abuse treatment can help a patient find healing through forgiveness of self and others. Forgiveness is an essential part of the healing process in treatment and recovery. Spiritual healing can help you let go of resentments and forgive yourself and others.

2. Finding Purpose

Exploring spirituality in recovery and during treatment can help patients find new purpose and meaning that will drive positive, healthy actions in life after addiction treatment. Spirituality can motivate people to focus outside of themselves and focus on helping others. Finding purpose helps you feel useful, important, and valued, fostering higher self-esteem and confidence.

3. Practicing Gratitude

Spirituality helps you build a more mindful approach to treatment and recovery, including practicing and showing gratitude through meditation and other mindful actions.

4. Connecting with Grace

Connection during addiction treatment and in recovery is essential to long-term sobriety. Especially key is developing a connection to a Higher Power that gives you grace. Private religious practices, such as prayer and reading, during treatment and recovery have positive impacts on sobriety success. Regardless of how you define and practice your unique sense of spirituality, connecting with grace through your higher power and others only strengthens sobriety.

5. Establishing Accountability

Spirituality in recovery helps a person develop accountability to a higher power. This spiritual accountability can be extended through your recovery community and loved ones.

What Is the Role of the Chaplain in Spiritual Care?

At Valley Hope addiction treatment centers, each residential provides a dedicated, full time chaplain team offering spiritual care and support for patients, including:

  • Spiritual Assessments
  • Development of Treatment Plan
  • Encourage 12 Step Work

Valley Hope chaplains also provide help as needed to each patient. The spiritually based 12 Step program is embedded in the Valley Hope treatment model. Our programing is designed, and our staff selected and trained around an integrated holistic model of treatment. With care and sensitivity, our clinical care team, including chaplains, explores and addresses all the areas that may be causing a patient pain or suffering.

How to Find Spirituality in Recovery

At Valley Hope addiction treatment centers, spirituality is embedded in our values and history, and patients are typically very receptive to exploring their personal spiritual beliefs — regardless of what they are — and how to leverage them as an essential part of their recovery strategy.

With experience and evidence cultivated over five decades of treating patients with drug and alcohol addictions, Valley Hope’s clinical research confirms the importance and effectiveness of integrating spirituality into our treatment model.

Each of Valley Hope’s 19 drug and alcohol addiction treatment programs address the mind, body and spirit. A combination of more than 50 years of experience treating addiction with extensive evidence-based research clearly confirms that spirituality plays a powerful role in healing and recovery from substance abuse.

The spiritually-based 12 Step program is embedded in the Valley Hope treatment model at each of our locations in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas. With care and sensitivity, our clinical care team, including chaplains, explores and addresses all the areas that may be causing a patient pain or suffering.

At Valley Hope, we provide a supportive spiritual care component within our evidence-based addiction treatment programs. Valley Hope remains one of the few addiction treatment organizations that provides a dedicated, full time chaplain team at each residential center. Our chaplains offer spiritual care and support in the clinical setting.

Reach out to our local admissions team today at (800) 544-5101 for immediate help.