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.

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.

Dr. Mark Gold is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville. He has conducted groundbreaking research into opiate addiction, its mechanism of action in the brain, and treatments.

Tonja Myles is a former addict and founder of the Set Free Indeed Ministry and Clinic in Baton Rouge, La., a faith-based addiction clinic. Myles was recognized by former President Bush at the 2003 State of the Union address. She and her husband, Darren, founded Set Free Indeed 14 years ago. They offer one-on-one counseling for people […]