Book Review: The Antidote to Alcohol and Drug Addiction: Why Worship May Help Kick the Habit.

From Christianity Today online. Looks like this book is worth your while if this is an issue in your life or the life of loved ones.

Although Dunnington’s prose is lucid and his insights helpful, many readers will find the philosophical portions heavy going. But those who persevere will appreciate his critique of our culture, and his proposal that Christian worship offers the only adequate response to the seductions of drink and drug.

Dunnington uses Aristotle and Aquinas to provide an account of addiction as habit—something between “instinct” and “disposition”—rather than a product of biological predestination or bad choices. If we understand addiction as habit, then the life of recovery becomes “a life of re-habituation rather than merely a life of repetition of acts of abstinence.” In other words, recovery entails replacing bad habits with good ones—habits conducive to virtuous, meaningful lives. For Dunnington, the bad habit of addiction results from our culture’s loss of transcendent meaning and purpose. Only the church, by preaching re-habituation towards the worship of God, can illuminate the path of true healing and renewal.

Read the whole review.