Prayer Addiction and William Glasser’s Positive Addiction

William Glasser is credited with the idea of positive addictions which are any activities in which a person feels a need or urge to participate and are considered positive even though they may possibly become a form of addiction. Can addiction be positive? This is what this study investigated using prayer addiction. The study adopted a survey design to collect data from 203 adult Christians, aged 20 and above, who participated through voluntary sampling. The research instrument, Prayer Attitude and Addiction Test (PAAT) was used to collect data. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and presented in words, percentages, tables, and figures. The findings revealed that almost all Christians (94%) pray on daily basis with more than half praying in a structured and regular manner. About 13.4% of Christians fit the criteria for prayer addiction. The criteria for prayer addiction includes negative consequences due to praying such as having guilt feelings or bad conscience because one has not prayed (70.9%), having physically/Emotionally/Spiritually hurt or neglected the self or others because of praying (20.1%), and having their prayer habit or praying affecting someone or some other important activities (33.2%). The frequency, and manner of praying in terms of structure and regularity weakly and negatively correlated with prayer addiction but significantly (r (173) = -.216, p = .004.; r (173) = -.179, p = .016 respectively). The study concluded that prayer addiction having negative consequences cannot be positive. Hence, a behavior can be a good, healthy, or positive habit, but not positive addiction.