The following is an excerpt from The Science and Spirituality of Addiction by Stuart Morse. It’s a featured Speakeasy selection, and there are still limited review copies available for qualified reviewers.
Foreword by me, Michael Morrell
When Stuart Morse asked me to edit his opus on addiction, spirituality, and neuroscience, I jumped at the chance. I’ve known Stuart through our overlapping work in personal development and human potential streams, and I’ve always appreciated his incisive mind and generous spirit. What I didn’t expect was how much I would learn from this remarkable book, The Science and Spirituality of Addiction.
As I began reading, I was immediately struck by Stuart’s willingness to be vulnerable about his own journey with addiction and recovery. This isn’t an academic tome written from an ivory tower of clinical detachment. Instead it’s a deeply personal exploration that manages to weave together cuttingedge neuroscience, time-tested wisdom traditions, and raw human experience into something truly unique and valuable.
The biochemistry sections were eye-opening for me. While I’ve spent years studying consciousness and human development from psychological and spiritual angles, my grasp of the underlying neuroscience has been limited. Stuart’s explanations of how dopamine, serotonin, and other neurotransmitters shape our experience and behavior are remarkably clear and accessible. His exploration of conditions like Brunner Syndrome helps us understand how biological predisposition affects behavior, while avoiding both determinism and moral oversimplification.
Perhaps most impressive is Stuart’s ability to draw insight from his Christian faith while fearlessly examining difficult questions about human behavior and biochemistry. While my own Christian path tends toward the more progressive and contemplative, and Stuart’s theological framework is somewhat more traditional, I found his integration of faith and science to be refreshingly nuanced. He demonstrates how scientific understanding can deepen rather than diminish our appreciation of human spirituality and our need for divine grace.
In exploring the spectrum of addiction, Stuart encourages us to drop our pat condemnations and widen our lens beyond the ‘usual suspects’ that some of us tend to wax judgmental about, such as drug, sex, and gambling addictions. While not neglecting these, he widens the aperture to include just about all of us in compulsion’s lens. His analysis of technology addiction, for instance is particularly timely and insightful. From social media to video games, from smartphones to designer drugs, he helps us
understand how modern innovations can hijack our brain’s reward systems. His examination of these issues through both contemporary and biblical lenses—particularly his analysis of idolatry then and now—offers fresh insight into age-old human struggles.
The book’s exploration of money, power, and status as potential objects of addiction is equally compelling. Stuart helps us see how our economic systems and social structures can enable and even encourage addictive patterns. His integration of Biblical wisdom with contemporary understanding of brain chemistry offers a unique perspective on why Jesus had so much to say about the dangers of wealth and power.
When Stuart ventures into territory more familiar to me—drawing on Integral Theory, Spiral Dynamics, and the work of theorists like Clare Graves, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Jung—he still managed to surprise me with fresh insights. His synthesis of developmental psychology with neuroscience offers new perspectives on why we get stuck in destructive
patterns and how we might find our way to greater wholeness.
Particularly fascinating is Stuart’s engagement with Steve Peters’s “Chimp Paradox” and John Piper’s concept of “Christian Hedonism.” He shows how understanding our brain’s reward systems can actually enhance rather than diminish our spiritual life, helping us grasp why genuine service and worship can be deeply pleasurable without becoming self-serving.
What makes this book particularly valuable is its holistic approach. Stuart recognizes that addiction isn’t simply a matter of biochemistry, psychology, or spirituality alone—it’s an intricate dance between all these aspects of human experience. By helping us understand these various dimensions and how they interact, he offers hope for those struggling with addiction while maintaining realistic expectations about the challenges of recovery.
I appreciate how Stuart consistently returns to the fundamental human need for connection and meaning. Whether discussing dopamine receptors or Biblical parables, he never loses sight of the fact that at our core, we are beings who long for authentic relationship—with ourselves, with others, and with the divine. His work helps us understand why we so often seek to fill this longing in ways that ultimately leave us feeling more isolated and empty.
The Science and Spirituality of Addiction arrives at a crucial moment in human history, as we grapple with rising addiction rates, increasing social isolation, and profound questions about how technology is reshaping human consciousness and community. Stuart’s integrated approach offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to understand these challenges—whether from a personal, professional, or societal lens.
For those struggling with addiction—whether to substances, behaviors, or pursuing wealth and status—this book offers both understanding and hope. For those working in helping professions, it provides a broader context for understanding addictive patterns and potential paths to healing. And for anyone interested in the intersection of science, spirituality, and human development, it offers fascinating insights and thought-provoking questions.
Stuart’s work reminds us that while the biochemistry of addiction may be complex, the path to healing ultimately leads us back to elegant truths about human nature and our need for authentic connection. By helping us better understand the science behind our struggles while maintaining sight of our spiritual essence, he offers a valuable contribution to both recovery literature and our broader understanding of human nature.
This is a book that deserves to be read slowly and thoughtfully. Its insights build upon each other, creating a comprehensive framework for understanding both addiction and human development more broadly. I’m grateful to Stuart for writing it, and for allowing me to be part of bringing it into the world.
—Michael Morrell
Michael Morrell is an award-winning, best-selling author, collaborator on The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation with Fr. Richard Rohr, founder of Wisdom Camp, and a founding organizer of this very justice, arts, and spirituality Wild Goose Festival. He co-parents his two astonishing kiddos in Asheville, NC.
What if you’re more addicted than you think?
Not to substances. Not to anything you’d confess in a meeting. But to money, prestige, romantic love, social media, the regard of others, the dopamine rush of political outrage, or the numbing comfort of control?
Stuart Morse’s The Science and Spirituality of Addiction: A Healing Guide for a Broken World opens with a disarming claim: there is ultimately only one addiction — the addiction to dopamine — and that means all of us are somewhere on this spectrum. The question isn’t whether we’re addicted to something. It’s whether we’re willing to look at ourselves with the “compassionate curiosity” that Gabor Maté describes, and ask the question that sits at the heart of this book: Why do I do what I do?
This isn’t a clinical textbook. Morse writes from his own lived experience — a recovery coach who has stared down his own compulsions — weaving cutting-edge neuroscience, developmental psychology, Christian theology, and integral theory into something that feels less like a lecture and more like a frank conversation over coffee with someone who’s been in the trenches. His chapters on technology addiction are especially timely: he traces with alarming precision how Silicon Valley has deliberately engineered our dopamine reward systems for maximum engagement, and how this maps onto ancient Hebrew warnings about idolatry. The god we bow to has updated its interface, but the mechanism of worship is the same.
Morse draws on the full range of thinkers who will be familiar to your contemplative and integral readers: Ken Wilber’s AQAL matrix, Spiral Dynamics, Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences, Carl Jung’s shadow integration, Victor Frankl’s search for meaning — all brought into dialogue with Jesus’s startling teachings on wealth, power, and the “eye of the needle.” His treatment of money and status as neurochemical addictions is not merely provocative; it’s exegetically serious, tracing the same dopamine prediction error that keeps a casino gambler pulling slots all the way to Solomon’s fatal fusion with his wives’ idols, and to the modern billionaire’s addiction to surplus value.
The path forward Morse offers is neither twelve-step nor purely spiritual bypass. It’s a fully integrated map: physiological recalibration, shadow work, developmental growth through the Spiral, contemplative practice, community, and the grace of a God who designed our reward systems and knows what they were meant to be filled with.
Perfect for readers who:
- Recognize themselves in the compulsive scrolling, the overworking, the numbing — and want to understand why
- Are drawn to Gabor Maté, Bessel van der Kolk, or Johann Hari’s work on addiction as disconnection
- Want neuroscience and Christian theology in genuine, non-forced dialogue
- Find Ken Wilber, Spiral Dynamics, or integral approaches compelling
- Work in counseling, recovery coaching, chaplaincy, or pastoral care
- Are curious why Jesus had so much to say about money, power, and the dangers of wealth
- Believe that healing the self and healing the world are inseparable projects
Praise for The Science and Spirituality of Addiction
“This book is a remarkably comprehensive and well-balanced guide that weaves neuroscience, systems thinking, spirituality, and lived experience into a compassionate whole. I especially appreciated how the book translates complex science into meaningful insight through strong thematic reflections and practical takeaways. Morse invites readers, regardless of spiritual orientation, into deeper understanding and tangible pathways toward healing. I would recommend this book to anyone seeking an integrative approach to addiction and recovery! Really excellent read.”
—Rebekah Gold, PhD Candidate, Child and Youth Studies
“A rare and timely work, The Science and Spirituality of Addiction reframes addiction with depth, rigor, and compassion. By weaving neuroscience, psychology, and spiritual insight, it replaces shame with understanding and ofers an integrated path toward healing—one that speaks equaly to the mind and soul, leaving professionals and general readers with a deeper sense of what healing can be.”
—Jayne Norman, Addiction and Mental Health Worker
“This book treats the spirit with as much clinical rigor as the brain. It fills the void left by my formal education, weaving biblical lessons into neuroscience and psychology to offer a complete map of the human person, while being enriched with stories of the author’s lived experience. This is the holistic method in its truest form—scientifically grounded, spiritually deep, and immensely hopeful. It is a vital resource for integrated healing.”
—Jasmine Tromp, Addiction Recovery Worker
About the Author
Stuart Morse has a master’s in science, is a Certified Canadian Recovery Coach, and is the Founder and Principal Coach at Emergent Horizons. This is his first book.
The Science and Spirituality of Addiction on Bookshop
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