This grouping effect will then have a positive effect on retention rates and commitment to establishing a drug-free lifestyle.
The diversity of individual religious practices is one of the main impediments to researchers attempting to define it efficacy in treatment programs (reviewed by Puffer, Skalski, and Meade, 2012). For example, the Religious Coping Scale (RCOPE) instrument is intended to bring some measure of standardization to the research being conducted in this area by discriminating between positive and negative religious beliefs. A positive religious coping practice would be the belief in a benevolent Higher Power and finding meaning in personal suffering. Negative religious coping, on the other hand, would be to believe personal suffering is God's punishment for past wrongs.
When Puffer and colleagues (2012) examined religious coping scores using the RCOPE instrument for patients undergoing a 3-4 day opioid detoxification program, they found that most had improved religious coping scores at the two-week follow-up interview; however, patients with either a positive or negative religious belief system will tend to maintain that belief system during recovery. Accordingly, a positive RCOPE score was not correlated with remaining drug free during the two-week period following detoxification, but a negative score accurately predicted relapse (p = 0.003).
Puffer and colleagues (2012) also asked patients undergoing detoxification how religious they were, from not at all to very. None of the 45 patients claimed to be very religious and only 13 reported being moderately religious. This is an interesting finding in light of the results of a Gallup poll, which found that between 54% and 60% of the U.S. population is very religious and another 23% to 29% is moderately...
While there are many problems with this comparison, including potentially large selection biases, it does highlight why researchers are interested in understanding the efficacy of religion in recovery programs.
Summary
Religion and spirituality do have a place in recovery from substance abuse, but researchers are still developing the necessary tools needed to generate reproducible and generalizable data that will benefit substance abusers and the medical care professionals who care for them. Despite this significant limitation though, the data that is being generated is consistent with the perception that religiosity or spirituality can improve the efficacy of treatment programs.
References
Borras, Laurence, Khazaal, Yasser, Khan, Riaz, Mohr, Sylvia, Kaufmann, Yves-Alexandre, Zullino, Daniele et al. (2010). The relationship between addiction and religion and its possible implication for care. Substance Use & Misuse, 45, 2357-2375.
Flynn, Patrick M., Joe, George W., Broome, Kirk M., Simpson, D. Dwayne, and Brown, Barry S. (2003). Recovery from opioid addiction in DATOS. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 25, 177-186.
Gallup, Inc. (2013). Religion. Gallup, Inc. Retrieved 8 Mar. 2013 from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx.
Magida, Arthur J. (1993, Feb. 19). Using religion to fight drugs: An interfaith task force is hoping spirituality can combat substance abuse. Baltimore Jewish Times, 34.
Puffer, Eve S., Skalski, Linda M., and Meade, Christina S. (2012). Changes in religious coping and relapse to drug use among opioid-dependent patients following inpatient detoxification. Journal of Religious Health, 51, 1226-1238.
Shields, Joseph J., Broome, Kirk M.,…
