Spirituality and Addiction: An Experiential Project to Foster Student Understanding

The linked poem (http://bit.ly/9AzbTU) was created by the entirety of an undergraduate class taking a course entitled: Introduction to Addictive Disorders. Students in the course, about 20, come from a variety of majors across the curriculum at Drexel University. The first line of the poem was drafted by the instructor, without a significant amount of forethought I might add…it just “came to me.” The sheet on which this single line was written was then given to a student, any student; the first student that volunteered to accept the sheet when a volunteer was solicited. That student was instructed to write the next line, which for him or her seemed to be suggested by the one line visible on the sheet. The top line was then folded under so that only the student’s line could be read by the next student and then the sheet was passed on and the process was repeated, the next student writing another single line suggested by "the only visible line on the sheet."

As a result of this process, each line represents the thoughts of a single student who was responding to only the line immediately preceding it that represented the thoughts of that single student who wrote it. As an aside, this was going on as the day’s lecture and discussion was continuing. In other words, the class did not stop while this activity was conducted. NOTE: The theme of the class was the role of spirituality in understanding and treating addictive disorders and it was suggested that spirituality is more than religion and is something more like worldview. In short, it was suggested that although “spirituality” and “religion” overlap, there may be less in common between the two than there is between spirituality and a sense of connectedness…connection between oneself and the Earth, other beings, other people, to a Higher Power, etc. Although waxing metaphysical, the point of the class was to invite students to appreciate the importance of considering addiction as a spiritual disorder or disease as well as physical and mental…in other words, to help them make sense of the AA belief that alcoholism (addiction) is a threefold disease of body, mind, and spirit.

To fully appreciate the result of this project, be sure to return to the first sentence after the last one is read in order to sense the connectivity and cyclical nature this exercise represents.

Dr. Robert