Religious groups help transform addiction from moral failure to treatable disease

Holly Meyer

The Tennessean

Wendell Taylor, 50, of Nashville was addicted to pain killers but has been clean for a year in December. He now works with Cul2vate, a food growing ministry in Nashville

NASHVILLE — Religious groups across the USA have long helped recovering addicts through 12-step programs and nonprofits that hire recovering addicts.

But now, many are turning their sights on the opioid crisis gripping the nation, and experts say they can do more to fight the epidemic.

Shining a spotlight on addiction educates congregants about the problem among family and friends and also helps reduce stigma, said Monty Burks, director of the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services’ faith-based initiatives and special projects.

Education can combat misconceptions and change the narrative, including viewing addiction as a treatable disease and not a moral failing, he said.

Faith coalitions in communities can raise awareness about the dangers of substance abuse and bring compassion to the conversation, said Kimberly Johnson with the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

That compassion already has helped Wendell Taylor, who started using prescription painkillers a decade ago to numb his back pain but ended up needing them to mask his mental pain.

"I've just done everything I could that I knew to do to help me grow spiritually because I knew it was going to take something bigger than me to get over it," said Taylor, a former West Tennessee concrete plant owner who marked one year of sobriety in December.

After his second round of treatment, Taylor, 50, moved to a halfway house here and sought out a couple of faith-based recovery programs to keep him from sliding back into an addiction that could kill him. Opioids — prescription medicines and heroin — killed more than 33,000 people in 2015 across the USA, the most on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To help prevent overdose deaths, religious-based organizations already involved in opioid treatment can make sure they’re up to speed on best practices, including using medication-assisted treatments, Johnson said. And they can continue to offer support and places to hold recovery meetings.

"Historically, institutions of faith have been at the forefront of every single major issue that we've had in our country," Burks said. "The key component in recovery is faith, so why not try to educate them and let them harness that number and that power and that belief in helping people in recovery?"

Stigma is big deterrent to mental-health and addiction treatment, said Yussuf Shafie, a licensed social worker in Minnesota who emigrated from Somalia as a child. He helps members of his state’s large Somali and Muslim populations struggling with behavioral health illnesses.

In both Somali culture and Islam, the illnesses can bring dishonor to both a patient and the family, Shafie said. The idea that mental illness and addiction are treatable medical conditions can be unfamiliar.

"They just say, 'Pray about it, and God will take care of it,' ” said Shafie, founder of Alliance Wellness Center in the Twin Cities' suburb of Bloomington, Minn.

Dr. Daniel Sumrok, a family physician and director of the Center for Addiction Science at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, talks to a group Feb. 10, 2017, during a therapy session in McKenzie, Tenn.

Barriers to treatment particularly cause anxiety to people who have endured decades of civil war and turmoil in their home country, the separation of families, and the uncertainty of refugee camps and immigration. Many still are dealing with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Studies show that traumatic events in children’s lives — including divorce, abuse and parents who use drugs — drive most compulsive-use disorders, said Dr. Daniel Sumrok, director of the Center for Addiction Science at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.

Children need safe families, homes and communities, he said.

"As a person of faith, it’s very clear to me that failed love is how this happens. And as a person of science, I can tell you we call it trauma, but it’s the same thing," said Sumrok, who recently spent five years as pastor of a small Southern Baptist church in McKenzie, Tenn.

Religion and addiction can mix in detrimental ways, especially when addiction is blended with immorality. But more education, including sharing neurological evidence about addiction as a disease and the role trauma plays, can help refute that poisonous message, he said.

More resources are available to congregations today than just a decade ago, said Sumrok, pointing to federal and state faith-based initiatives. Inroads are being made at the ground level, too.

In the Twin Cities, the recovery community has been welcoming to Muslims, and some AA groups have evolved to be more religiously universal, Shafie said. A pilot program also has been training imams to recognize symptoms of mental illness and addiction and gives them resources to refer members of their mosque.

In Pennsylvania, Kent Vandervort, pastor for urban ministries and administration at Stillmeadow Church of the Nazarene, is one of a group of pastors and volunteers in York, about 85 miles west of Philadelphia, who working to address the opioid and heroin epidemic. He tries to help those struggling with addiction tackle their underlying issues in group therapy.

"The hard part is what's driving them to do it," Vandervort said. "You're still dealing with someone who's wounded."

Contributing: Stephanie Dickrell, St. Cloud (Minn.) Times, and Gordon Rago, York (Pa.) Daily Record. Follow Holly Meyer on Twitter: @HollyAMeyer

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