John Wesley's holistic approach to addiction healing and recovery

Life Beyond the Hangover: How John Wesley's Idea of Healing May Facilitate a Holistic Healing Process from Addiction Wesley believed that body and soul were interconnected in an undeniable way: one could not focus exclusively on the spiritual to the neglect of the body and one could not focus exclusively on the boy to the neglect of the spiritual. Either way would lead to ruin because man is neither wholly angelic nor wholly bestial: he is a combination of animal and spirit, body and soul. Thus, a holistic approach to care is one that embraces both prayer and medicine. God is the ultimate source of healing—but this does not mean He wants or expects people to forego practical steps towards healing, such as developing a social support network to help with the psychological challenge of trying to break an addiction. Both AA and the Betty Ford Foundation have essentially arrived at the same conclusion: people need assistance in battling addictions like alcoholism. AA acknowledges the need of submitting oneself to God, while building out one’s personal support network; Betty Ford practitioners adopt a similar generalist approach to psychological healing. Other approaches include the task-centered approach to healing that social workers use. All of these are helpful in alcoholic rehabilitation, and all compare favorably with the teachings of John Wesley.
One of the great insights of Wesley was that there is no universal approach to health and healing that serves as a one-size-fits-all model for intervention. Wesley understood that every case and situation is unique, that every person’s health—both spiritual and physical—has its own challenges and issues that need to be addressed. Thus, Wesley could give one bit of advice to a brother and another bit of advice to a friend, the former receiving directives in line with more traditional dietary health approaches and the latter receiving directives in line with more of a spiritual focus. Wesley saw that some people and struggling with health, whether in the body or in the mind, because their spirits are not in the right place and by commending oneself to God one is better able to make use of the grace that He sends as the Great Physician. With others, he could see that the spirit was not posing any problems and that what was needed for healing was simply a better diet, as he recommended to his brother (Madden 189). In either case, Wesley pointed out that for holistic healing to take place one has to have a two-pronged approach—a prayerful approach to God, Who is the source of all healing—and a practical approach to the body and mind, which are the gifts God has given to man and which God expects man to take care of just like He does any other gift in man’s life—from animals to home to finances and so on.
Thus, Wesley could write to his friend Alex, “It will be a double blessing if you give yourself up to the Great Physician, that He may heal soul and body together. And unquestionably this is His design. He wants to give you . . . both inward and outward health” (Madden 189). And with regard to his brother, he could write: “Whether he will or no, carry Dr. Whitehead to him. If he cannot go out, and yet must have exercise or die, persuade him to use [the wooden horse] twice or thrice a day, and procure one for him” (Maddox 10). Dr. Whitehead was Wesley’s own personal physician and when talking about physicians, Wesley stated that they should be honored because they were appointed by God. Thus, as Maddox notes, Wesley affirmed the need for divine and medical healing. Avoiding medical treatment was not something he recommended: relying solely upon divine intervention revealed a presumptive state of the soul; Wesley saw that souls must be humble and people must realize that God wants them to use the means of healing He has made available to them so that through this healing process His glory can be manifested all the more brightly.
In AA, a similar holistic approach is adopted by the organization. The 12 step philosophy is essentially a holistic approach to recovery. In AA it is observed that alcohol addiction is a mind, body and spirit illness. Thus, recovery must address all aspects of the illness—the psychological aspects, the physical aspects and the spiritual aspects. To focus only on one or two is to provide only an incomplete approach. It is believed that the mental, the physical, the emotional and the spiritual factors are all what go into dictating the terms of one’s life. The spiritual is a component that man cannot do without since man is part-spirit. The physical and mental components cannot be ignored either since man is part-animal as well.
Thus, AA compares favorably with Wesleyan holistic healing in that both affirm the need for spiritual and medical attention. From the mental front, AA calls for a new mental perspective for those seeking recovery. It calls for keeping a positive focus and for setting realistic goals for oneself. From the physical side, AA calls for good nutrition, exercise, and the cultivation of a health environment for oneself. This is all quite similar to Wesley’s call for a healthier diet and exercise for his brother when his brother was ill. From the Emotional front, AA calls for a release from one’s past (do not be bogged down by past feelings of regret and despondency but be willing to leave the past in the past and focus one’s feelings on moving forward); forgiving oneself and others, and embracing the cathartic process, which is the purging or purifying of the emotions so that the negative feelings that can burden one are washed away. From the spiritual side, AA calls for having a soul purpose, i.e., union with God; divine connectedness; and an ability to intimate and intuitively understand how God is guiding one. All of these different sides to healing combine in the 12-step philosophy to impact one’s life in a positive manner, enabling the addict to address the illness, the trauma underlying one’s bad decision-making, the emotional issues that persist as a result, and all oncoming life challenges that have the potential to derail one and set one back even after one has made substantial progress (Miller, Plants).
The Betty Ford Foundation uses a similar approach as well, but comes at the process of healing addiction from the standpoint of generalist theory. In generalist theory, the macro, micro and mezzo systems and the way they interact provide the practitioner with a holistic view of the client, which is important considering that every client who comes to the Foundation for help is essentially a stranger and the practitioner needs to know more about the client in order to treat him holistically (Marsh, Doel). This approach ensures that the individual suffering from the addiction is viewed by the treatment provider in an all-encompassing manner. The treatment provider at the Foundation will consider the environment of the client, utilize and ecological and systems perspective, and place the addiction with a systems context. Generalist theory allows the treatment provider, social worker or counselor to work with individual clients, whole families, large or small groups, entire organizations, and communities. One of the goals of the generalist approach is treatment of the society as well—not just the individual—because at the macro level it must be realized that the addicted individual is but one manifestation of the society and represents a social, moral and physical and spiritual ill in the community as well.
Such recognition of the need for the larger society to be treated as well also aligns with the Wesleyan perspective, for Wesley saw that spiritual connectedness was vital for the entire community and for all society—not just one individual here or there. Wesley’s approach thus also had a macro, micro and mezzo level perspective that could allow him to write treatises for the whole of the community in general while giving advice at the individual level on a case by case basis while also making mid-level remarks that could further assist people who shared common characteristics or maladies in their spiritual or physical lives.
One of the commonalities of the Betty Ford Foundation and AA is that they both adopt a positive approach to healing. Generalist theory posits that people and systems have to be viewed from the perspective of strength rather than weakness. This approach allows one to identify the strengths of the addict and build upon those. It also allows one to address the needs of the community as well, to see what the strengths of the community are, how they can be leveraged, and what additional services are needed in the community (Marsh, Doel). This type of holistic view of the client and his community is wholly in line with the Wesleyan approach to healing, as it is comprehensive and interventionist from a practical and positivist approach. The generalist framework does not exclude spiritual focus either but recognizes the importance of a faith-based network of support the same way AA does. It is all about understanding the interconnectedness of things, as the AA approach to healing the mind, body, spirit and emotions shows in its path towards mending the life and redirecting one’s energy to more positive and healthier goals.
A common approach within the generalist framework is task-centered care. Task-centered care focuses on identifying specific, measurable and achievable goals. It does not require a great deal of time in terms of the length of the intervention and is unlike the AA approach in that manner. Many people who join AA remain life-long members and return to sessions week after week because they find the kind of social support at these meetings that they need and that they want to supply to others. Task-centered approach is different within the generalist framework in that it will usually only last a dozen sessions or so (which is similar to the 12-step framework) and will be applied with individuals or families or groups. Task-centered care is based on the work of Epstein and Reid, who developed it at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration.
Rather than a 12-step process like that used in AA, task-centered care is a 4-step process that could be viewed as a distillation of the 12-step model and a representation of the kind of Wesleyan care used in holistic healing. Task-centered practice focuses on identifying 3 target areas that the addicted individual and the care provider will work towards addressing during the session. The client is the one who identifies these problem areas, so it is a method that is client-centered, too. Using the task-centered care approach, the client and the care provider create a contract together that binds the client to addressing the identified target areas and accomplishing those goals. As in the generalist framework, the strengths of the individual and the person’s priorities are used to facilitate the treatment (Reid, Epstein). The four steps of this program are: 1) Define the target areas, 2) identify the goals of the contract, 3) communicate the outcomes of tasks that are accomplished, and 4) evaluate whether the intervention has been a success or if a continuation of the program is required for full effect.
AA focuses on keeping the approach to holistic healing simple and systematic (Miller, Plants). The Wesleyan approach is also focused on holistic healing but it does not rely heavily upon any systematic method. Indeed, during the Enlightenment Era in which Wesley lived, a great many philosophers and thinkers over-emphasized rationalistic and systematic methods, which were a cause of irritation for Wesley and his holistic and essentially individualized approach to healing: “Wesley regarded excessive rationalism and systematic philosophy as major irritants” (Madden 64). For Wesley, developing a systematic approach was more reflective of man’s sinful pride in thinking he could devise a system that was perfect in and of itself when the reality is that God is the Great Physician and has to be part of any approach to healing. In short, there is a Wisdom in the healing process that remains a Mystery because it is God directing the process rather than man. Man is simply attempting to read the cards that are meant for his cue and respond to the grace offered Him by God. However, Wesley did not deny the utility of reason in faith. Wesley’s An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion in 1743 was essentially a confirmation that faith rested upon reason (Madden 65). His aim was to find the harmony between Scripture and nature. Since God had created the world, there should be nothing in nature that would contradict the goodness of God. Medicine was thus a natural good in Wesley’s approach to holistic healing and complemented the spiritual goodness of connecting with God. Thus, Wesley acknowledged that “physic was a branch of natural philosophy, and so healing the body by recourse to empirical methods was perfectly valid” (Madden 70).
The biopsychosocial and spiritual models of addiction used by AA or the Betty Ford Foundation or by Wesley are all inherently similar in that they all recognize that if one is addicted to a substance like alcohol, one is subject to a bodily impulse—a physical, chemical dependency that has developed in the body and in the mind; however, there is also the recognition among these approaches that there may be a spiritual defect in the person as well. As Doweiko has pointed out, substance abuse can alter the chemical makeup in the brain to the point where one needs the substance simply to be able to function in life at a basic level. Without the alcohol, for example, an alcoholic feels impaired—when it is actually the alcohol that is impairing the person’s ability to live without it. At the same time, Wesleyan approach and AA can view the addiction as a spiritual problem because the person is operating without God in his soul. This rejection of God leads to more and more negative behavior and patterns of living so that one is not happy. As Brand, Snagowski, Laier and Maderwald show, there is a strong neural basis for addiction, and as Laaser points out, addiction is usually formed as a result of “building-block behaviors” that can start at a young age and lead to greater and greater levels of addiction over time (28). But Gilbert shows, too, that spiritual approaches are important for addressing addiction because it is a spiritual combat between God and Satan, both of whom are vying for the individual’s soul. The individual must throw in his lot with one or the other, and prayer is the best way to throw one’s lot in with God. That is something AA and Wesley both teach.
McKeague states that “shame is the core affect” of addiction once the person wakes up to the fact of his addiction and feels how it is impacting his life and those around him negatively (203).