Addiction Treatment: Comparing Religion and Science in Application

by Hood,Daniel E.

• ISBN13: 9781412814638
• ISBN10: 1412814634
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Addiction Treatment is an ethnography that compares two types of residential drug-free treatment programs-religious, faith-based programs and science-based, secular programs. Although these programs have originated from significantly different ideological bases, in examining the day-to-day operations of each, Daniel E. Hood concludes that they are far more alike than they are different. Drug-free treatment today, whether in secular or religious form, is little more than a remnant of the temperance movement. It is a warning to stop using drugs. At its best, treatment provides practical advice and support for complete abstinence. At its worst, it demeans users for a form of behavior that is not well understood and threatens death if they do not stop. Hood argues that there is no universal agreement on what addiction is and that drug abuse is little more than a catch-all term of no specific meaning used to condemn behavior that is socially unacceptable. Through extensive participatory observations, intimate life history interviews, and informal conversations with residents and staff, Hood shows how both programs use the same basic techniques of ideological persuasion ( mutual witnessing ), methods of social control ( discourse deprivation ), and the same proposed zero tolerance, abstinent lifestyle ( Christian living vs. Right living ) as they endeavor to transform clients from addicts to citizens or from sinners to disciples.Daniel E. Hood, sociologist, ethnographer, and harm reductionist, is an assistant professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Farmingdale. He is the author of a Drug Policy Alliance research report entitled "Harm Reduction as Treatment: An Ethnographic Consideration" and an editor of two safety manuals for IV drug users.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction: Redemption and Recovery as Addiction Treatment	p. xiii
Two Houses: People, Places, and Programs	p. 1
Parallels in Redemption and Recovery: A Prima Facie Case	p. 39
Redemption House: The Social Construction of a Calling	p. 83
Recovery House: The Social Construction of Pathology	p. 121
Ritual, Miracle, and Myth: Reinforcing Faith in Redemption and Recovery	p. 169
Recovery and Redemption: Conclusions, Previews, and Alternatives	p. 197
Bibliography	p. 209
Author Index	p. 227
Subject Index	p. 229
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