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.

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 […]

Dr. Peter R. Martin is a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s division of addiction medicine in Nashville, Tenn. The department is involved in research, treatment and teaching.