The Science and Spirituality of Addiction

(This article was originally published in the Victoria News on May 24, 2026)

When software engineer Stuart Morse had a bad day at work, he would come home to Saanich to a glass of wine to take out the bad taste of the day. After decades, he realized that the harmful habit had turned into an addiction he had to work his way out of.

Morse combined his experience and findings of his studies about addiction, the process of recovery, spirituality and behavioural change to write a book. The Science and Spirituality of Addiction: A Healing Guide for a Broken World was released in January this year, and he said it is receiving positive feedback from readers.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you’ll call it fate, said Morse, quoting psychotherapist Carl Jung. He explained that he sees addiction as something that arrives unconsciously and something people fail to notice and might even deny until it becomes a bigger problem in their lives.

One of the main goals of the book is to educate people about the combination of science and spirituality in human lives and how that combination can become a way out of addiction.

“So my main goal is to unearth those things that are happening under the surface of our lives and make them plain, make them something that we can deal with. It’s a guide to understanding and dealing with addictions,” he said.

The book also explores spirituality on a religious level, although Morse does not want to alienate non-religious readers.

“It does dabble with religion, and it does lean into the Bible as an early psychology textbook. So that’s really where science and spirituality merge, looking at the way the brain operates as defining our relationship with one another.”

The Drug Crisis

Speaking on the Victoria drug crisis, Morse said that he believes decriminalizing drugs is a great way to address it. He said when it was first introduced, it had a positive effect in mitigating the issue by allowing people to come forward and seek help. But it also allowed them to do drugs whenever they wanted, which is a negative aspect of it, he explained.

“And I think the outcome was that the negatives outweighed the positives.”

Morse added that he is more interested in Portugal’s approach to dealing with the drug crisis in the early 2000s. He has spoken with BC politicians about why it became unsuccessful the first time and how to bring it back to B.C.

“So my biggest goal, and I don’t know how many years, maybe another 10 years if I’m successful, is to bring the Portuguese approach to the drug crisis to British Columbia,” he said.

The "Breaking the Cycle" Workshop

After publishing the book, Morse wanted to further spread awareness about the subject through a workshop.

Breaking the Cycle: A Fresh Look at Addiction and Recovery is a workshop Morse is conducting to give an introductory knowledge of addiction and recovery. Through the workshop, he tries to raise awareness about how a harmless habit of sipping a glass of wine a night to deal with unpleasant feelings of the day could lead to an addiction.

“I wanted to understand what addiction is and what it isn’t. And this thing is called the grey area, where most people operate, but they rarely examine it. I think that this is something that’s not covered well by the help that is in place. They seem more to cater to the extreme cases where people have hit what they call rock bottom. My target is broader.”

The writer also wants to overcome the stigma around addiction and spread empathy towards those who are going through it. Although most people treat addiction as a moral failure, he believes it is more of a human struggle where there is underlying pain that most do not see.

The workshop is set for June 9 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Esquimalt Gorge Pavilion.