Abstract

Alcoholics Anonymous is a world renowned program for recovering alcoholics, however, little research has been undertaken in this area. There are good reasons for that fact. One is the anonymity of the program and its members, and another is that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous does not keep ample records of its members or of its success rate. This dissertation was designed to examine two of the most basic principals of Alcoholics Anonymous, spirituality and contented sobriety. ;The purpose of this study was to propose and test a model of contented sobriety. The variables in the model included Age, Education, Family Support, Job Support, AA Attendance, Spirituality, and Life-Satisfaction. The model was tested separately for men and for women and then compared across gender. Volunteers from Alcoholics Anonymous groups in Shelby County, Tennessee were asked either before or after scheduled meetings to fill out a questionnaire, which was used to measure the variables in this study. ;Thc model was tested as to its degree of fit with the collected data using LISREL. The chi-square goodness-of-fit statistic was used to determine the degree of fit. The model did not fit the collected data and a stepwise multiple regression was performed to clarify the significant contributors to contented sobriety. ;The results indicated that spirituality was not significantly related to contented sobriety, and that none of the proposed pathways in the model were significant. The results were, however, significantly different for the men and the women. For the men, the pathway between life-satisfaction and contented sobriety was significant, the higher the life-satisfaction, the higher the contented sobriety. The relationship between AA attendance and spirituality was also significant for the men. For the women, the most important pathways were between spirituality and life-satisfaction and between life-satisfaction and contented sobriety. As proposed, the higher the spirituality, the higher the life-satisfaction. AA attendance was not significantly related to spirituality among the women. Implications for further research are discussed