A Systematic Review of Recent Literature On Religiosity and Substance Use

Summary

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This paper contains a systematic review of articles about the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and alcohol and drug use that were published between 1997 and 2006. Summaries of methodological characteristics (e.g., study design, sample size and composition, specific dimensions of religiosity, and substances investigated) and general findings of 105 studies provide an overview of the field. The association between religiosity/spirituality and reduced risk of substance use is well established, but a well defined body of knowledge on this relationship has been slow to emerge. The development of more sophisticated instrumentation to measure religiosity and spirituality, the investigation of samples that include users of major drugs of abuse, and the integration of the study of religion and drug use into the broader literature on religion and health can help the field build upon the considerable work that has been published.

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A Systematic Review of Recent Literature On Religiosity and Substance Use

INTRODUCTION

The influence of religion on the use and misuse of alcohol and other psychoactive drugs has been debated for many years, and the study of the relationship between religiosity, spirituality, and substance use still constitutes something of a frontier for our research community. Approximately 40 years ago, Hirschi and Stark (1969) surveyed 4,077 students in California and found no relationship between religiosity and delinquent behavior, and by inference this lack of influence was assumed to include psychoactive substance use behavior as well. That landmark study stimulated multiple empirical investigations, several of which subsequently observed a negative/ protective association between religion and drug use (Burkett & White, 1974; Stark, Kent, & Doyle, 1982). Despite these studies, religiosity has not become a central concept of interest until recently, and the number of empirical articles about the role of religion that have appeared in journals devoted to the study of substance use is relatively small when compared to the number of publications on the influence of genetic, neurotransmission, personality disorder, parent and peer relationships, socioeconomic, and subcultural factors.

It seems ironic that research on this subject has been relatively modest, given the variety of ways in which the history of the use and regulation of alcohol and other drugs is embedded with religion and spirituality. Altered states of consciousness have been part of religious experience throughout human history and repeatedly have involved the use of psychoactive substances such as alcohol, coca, marijuana, mushrooms, and peyote (Aberle, 1996). A diversity of religious thought exists, however, about whether drug-assisted states can invoke or impair spiritual development (Miller, 1998). The scriptures and related writings of several religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam variously proscribe the use and/ or misuse of alcohol and other psychoactive drugs, while at the same time several rel...

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