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.

The Rev. Linda Mercadante is a professor of theology at Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. She is the author of Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious (2014). Her focuses are spirituality, victimization, gender, addiction, sin and evil, imagery of God, and the Shakers.

Thomas Johnson is a professor of psychology and associate director at the Center for the Study of Health, Religion & Spirituality at Indiana State University in Terre Haute. His research focuses on the relationship between alcohol use and religiosity/spirituality, and spirituality and motives for drinking and not drinking.

Elizabeth Robinson is a research professor at the University of Michigan Addiction Research Center’s department of psychiatry in Ann Arbor. She has conducted a five-year study on long-term spiritual changes in alcoholism recovery and has also studied the spiritual and religious status of those entering alcohol treatment, ethnic difference in religious coping styles of those entering […]

Rabbi Joel Dinnerstein of Deerfield Beach, Fla., has directed a Jewish 12-step counseling program, Ohr Ki Tov, since 1985. Inspired by Hasidic Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, this organization integrates prayer, song and storytelling with the 12 steps and Jewish learning, values and practice for recovery. Dinnerstein was the first rabbi to become a certified addiction counselor; he […]

David Whiters is a social worker and the executive director of Recovery Consultants of Atlanta, a faith-based, peer-led recovery community services program. Whiters is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia’s School of Social Work and recently co-authored a historical review of faith-based treatments for addiction in Counselor: The Magazine for Addiction Professionals.