This is a qualitative research exploring the recovering alcoholics’ spiritual experience. The data collection of this study was conducted form August, 1994 to May, 1995. The research participants were nine male persons who were the members of alcoholics anonymous and were keeping sobriety for more than three years. The data were analized using phenomenological approach suggested by Van Kaam.
The recovering alcoholics’ spiritual experience fell into four division: lived experience before sobriety, situations of spiritual experience, change of life after spiritual experience, and synthesis. And it can be concluded:
1. Lived experience before sobriety: experiencing psychological anxiety and social maladaptation such as inferiority, loneliness and hopelessness, fear and anger, and self-injury like writing in blood, suicide attempt in the pain by relapse.
2. Situations of spiritual experience: spiritual experience was made through personal life or effort such as loneliness, desire for human love, self-awareness of alcoholics, but mostly through the experience of high power by means of good fellowship or collective effort like the process of message in AA and practice of AA 12 step.
3. Change of life after sobriety: maintaining continuous sobriety life by change of self-concept, social growth and emotional stability, through taking on a new meaning for alcohol, depending life on high power, and through life of sharing and service by means of spiritual experience and practice of AA 12 step.
4. Synthesis: (a) the alcoholics before sobriety experience psychological anxiety and social maladaptation such as inferiority, loneliness and hopelessness, fear and anger, and self-injury like writing in blood, suicide attempt in the pain by relapse; (b) spiritual experience is made through personal life or effort such as loneliness, desire for human love, self-awareness of alcoholics, but mostly through the experience of high power by means of good fellowship or collective effort like the process of message in AA and practice of AA 12 step; (c) they maintain continuous sobriety life by change of self-concept, social growth and emotional stability, through taking on a new meaning for alcohol, depending life on high power, and through life of sharing and service by means of spiritual experience and practice of AA 12 step.
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