Dr. Walter Ling is a professor of psychiatry and director of the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lee Ann Kaskutas is the director of training at the Alcohol Research Group, National Alcohol Research Center in Berkeley, Calif. Her focus is in non-professional treatments such as self-help groups, peer support, social networks, spirituality, and education on the effects of alcohol consumption.

Sarah Zemore is an associate scientist at the Berkeley, Calif.-based Alcohol Research Group who studies social disadvantage and the role of ethnicity, race and socioeconomics in substance use, substance abuse and treatment.

Dr. Linda Hyder Ferry is a professor of medicine at Loma Linda University’s School of Medicine and Public Health in Loma Linda, Calif., who is doing research on spirituality and recovery from addictions, specifically from nicotine addiction. She is the founder of the Foundation for Innovations in Nicotine Dependence (FIND).

Chris Prentiss is co-founder of Passages in Malibu, Calif., an eclectic, holistic substance abuse treatment center that claims to have a cure rate exceeding 80 percent. Prentiss developed his individually based approach by dealing with his son, who was addicted to heroine, cocaine and alcohol for 10 years. Prentiss recently published The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure: A […]

Paul Spicer is a cultural anthropologist who researches human development, behavioral medicine and bioethics. He is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. He has studied American Indian spirituality and alcohol.

Michael Winkelman is a professor of anthropology at Arizona State University in Tempe whose research focuses on shamanism and medical anthropology. He has studied contemporary applications of shamanic healing in substance abuse rehabilitation, pioneering the idea of shamanism as humanity’s original neurotheology.

William Richard Miller is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He served as director of Clinical Training for UNM’s doctoral program in clinical psychology and co-director of the Center on Alcoholism, Substance Abuse and Addictions (CASAA) with a focus on behavioral treatments for addictions.

Kathy Goggin is a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri in Kansas City who has studied the protective role of spirituality in alcohol and HIV risk behaviors.