Recovering from Substance Abuse
RECOVERY FROM SUBSTANCE abuse is a recovery phenomenon that is of importance to nursing. Reports in the literature indicate that recovery from substance abuse is a complex multidimensional process that occurs both with and without expert assistance. Whereas a combination of human, social, and economic costs of substance abuse have led to a plethora of research on topics such as the epidemiology of substance abuse, treatment outcomes such as client functioning, relapse phenomena, and most recently matching individual and treatment characteristics, very little is known about recovery from substance abuse in African American women. Although studies conducted with women have increased within the last decade, those conducted may not be generalizable to African American women. It is estimated that women represent at least one-quarter of all who are dependent on various substances . The recidivism rate for substance abusers has been reported to be at 90% 12 months after treatment, with most relapse occurring after 3 months.
For many African American women recovering from substance abuse, current treatment modalities and self-help groups do not meet their needs, because mainstream treatment of substance abuse has traditionally been developed and implemented by male providers for male clients. Unlike treatment for men, which can be individualistic oriented, women’s treatment must be focused within the context of their relationship to others. Research suggests that women may benefit from substance abuse programs that include a residential component, as well as gender-specific services. Spirituality has often been noted in the health care literature to affect recovery
Although there has been a proliferation of reports in the health care literature substantiating the ameliorating effects of spirituality with a broad range of positive outcomes, only a few have focused on specific spiritually derived strategies as an aid to recovery. It has also become important to articulate the distinction between spirituality and religion. Although some may regard the two as indistinguishable, others believe religion has specific behavioral, social, doctrinal, and denominational characteristics, whereas spirituality is concerned with the transcendent, and addressing ultimate questions about life’s meaning. These differences are acknowledged. Undoubtedly, this confusion between spirituality and religion has been a huge roadblock in the understanding of what it means to be human.
An individual’s unique spirituality or spiritual “style,” is the way he or she seeks to find or create, use, and expand personal meaning in the context of the universe. Feminist researchers and theologians have suggested that spirituality may be expressed differently by women than by men concluded that ethnic minority women returned to church after beginning recovery with greater regularity than Anglo women. It is, therefore, possible that the ethnic minority churches may be meeting the needs of recovering women. The need for an Afrocentric approach in the treatment and recovery of substance abuse that would facilitate the strengthening of identity, spirituality, and community has been articulated by several researchers interested in the Afrocentric worldview. Spirituality is considered to be the cornerstone of activities within the African American community. Most of these activities are centered around the Black Church. How spirituality might be used in recovery and healing needs to be explored and described in this population.
Since the conception of modern nursing by Nightingale, spirituality has been central to the essence of nursing. In providing holistic care, nursing now addresses spirituality. The concept that the provision for patients’ spiritual needs is encompassed within the nurse’s role is supported by prolific nursing writers such as, some nurse theorists. Nurses are obligated to care for the whole human being, presupposing that they understand and accept patients’ spiritual experiences irrespective of their ways of expressing them. Therefore, the first step is for nurses and other health care professionals to begin their own spiritual journeys. As nurses achieve awareness of their inner selves, they can more readily address the spiritual needs of others by looking beyond the physical and more deeply within, and become aware that there is something sacred that can be witnessed and shared in the midst of life’s illness and disease. A phenomenological understanding of all that spirituality may represent to African American women is relevant to the recovery process from substance abuse.
The perspectives of provide the conceptual orientation for this study, whereas direction for data analyses was provided by the procedural steps of method. states that the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, and from hour to hour. proposed that the chief dynamic behind the addictive behavior is “existential frustration” created by a vacuum of a perceived meaning in personal existence, and manifested by the symptom of boredom. The underpinnings of Frankl’s work stresses individual’s freedom to transcend suffering and find meaning in life regardless of his circumstances. The substance abuser often looks on his existence as meaningless and without purpose. concept of how meaning in life differs from day to day correlates with the philosophies of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in their statement about staying sober “one day at a time.” work is based on empirical or phenomenological analysis, which was described as the way in which, man understands himself, and how he interprets his own existence.
Methodology
Phenomenology was chosen as the methodology for this study, in that it describes the world as it is experienced before any theories being devised to explain it. The aim of phenomenology in nursing research is to describe the experience of others so that those who care for these individuals may be more empathetic and understanding of the person’s experience.
Phenomenology seeks meanings from appearances and arrives at essences through intuition and reflection on conscious acts of experiences, leading to ideas, concepts, judgements, and understandings. The core processes included in the phenomenological methodology are epoche or bracketing, phenomenological reduction (intuiting), imaginative variation (analyzing), and synthesis of meanings and essences (describing). Bracketing involves refraining from judgment, abstaining or staying away from the everyday or ordinary way of seeing things. In our natural attitude we tend to hold knowledge judgmentally, we presuppose that what we perceive in nature is actually there and remains there as we perceive it. Giorgi describes this process as setting aside one’s own presuppositions or knowledge about a particular phenomenon. Intuiting involves the task of describing in textural language, just what one sees, not only in terms of the external object but also the internal acts of consciousness. The reduction is strictly a methodological move to temporarily strip the world of the multitude of implicit presumptions about its existence as “real” thereby allowing aspects of the world to occur as pure phenomena for consciousness. The term imaginative variation or analyzing means “to arrive at structural descriptions of an experience, the underlying and precipitating factors that account for what is being experienced”, p. 98. Giorgi refers to this process as the delineation of “meaning units” and that by freely changing aspects or parts of a phenomenon or object one is able to see if the phenomenon remains identifiable or not. Characteristics that describe a phenomenon are imagined or condensed thoroughly by the researcher and those elements that clearly describe and are characteristic of the phenomena are considered essential. Describing involves the integration of textural language into a unified statement of the essences of the experience of the phenomenon under investigation. It is describing the central characteristics of the phenomenon by using analogy, negation, and metaphor.
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