They don’t believe in a higher power, and addiction is a spiritual disease that requires a spiritual solution. Young ad- dicts are no strangers to the spiritual.

When they drink and drug, they are chemically filling “the hole in their soul.” Theologians call it a “higher-power hunger.”

Martin Luther said, “Whatever thy heart clings to and relies upon, that is higher power.” Likewise, the theologian Paul Tillich said that higher power is whatever concerns us ultimately, our “ultimate concern.”

These definitions fit all addicts, for indeed their “ultimate concern,” their higher power, is their drug of choice. So addicts do know what it means to organize their lives and wills around a higher power that is their particular ad- diction; yet ironically, identifying and turning their lives and will over to a higher power that is a symbol of positive virtues and action becomes their biggest hurdle. This hurdle is so daunting because teen addicts don’t really know what “spirituality” is.

Spirituality seems like wu-wu and God an enigmatic figure of mythology.

- Excerpt from Part 2 (Reason number 3 of 12) of Amazing Grief: A Healing Guide for parents of Young Addicts