The relationship between religious practice and the moderate use or avoidance of alcohol is well documented,

regardless of whether denominational beliefs prohibit the use of alcohol. According to general studies, the higher the

level of religious involvement, the less likely the use or abuse of alcohol. Persons who abuse alcohol rarely have a

strong religious commitment. In their study of the development of alcohol abuse, David Larson and William P. Wilson,

professors of psychiatry at Northwestern University School of Medicine, found that nine out of ten alcoholics had lost

interest in religion in their teenage years, in sharp contrast to teenagers generally, among whom interest in religion

increased by almost 50 percent and declined by only 14 percent. Robert Coombs and his colleagues at the University

of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine found that alcohol abuse is 300 percent higher among those who do

not attend church. Drug and alcohol use is lowest in the most conservative religious denominations and highest in non-

religious groups, while liberal church groups have use rates just slightly lower than those for non-religious groups. But

for all groups, religious commitment correlates with absence of drug abuse. The parental attitude to religion also is

important in dealing with alcohol use. A 1985 study indicated that if the mother and father have deep, competing

differences toward religious belief and practice, their children are more likely to use or abuse alcohol than are children

whose parents do not differ on matters of religion. Conversely, if their parents' religious beliefs and practices are

similar, children are far more likely to abstain from alcohol or to drink with moderation. Almost three decades before

these findings, Orville Walters, then a research fellow at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in Topeka, Kansas, found

that alcoholics who came from religious backgrounds tended to have mothers who were highly religious but fathers who

were more non-religious. Paralleling the research on alcohol addiction, an early review of studies of drug addiction

found a lack of religious commitment to be a predictor of who abuses drugs. Many more recent studies replicate this

finding. As in so many other research studies, the best measurement of religious commitment is frequency of church

attendance: "Overall church attendance was more strongly related to [less] drug use than was intensity of religious

feelings." This is true for both males and females. According to Jerald G. Bachman of the Institute for Social Research

at the University of Michigan, "Factors we found to be most important in predicting use of marijuana and other drugs

during the late 1970's remained most important during the early 1980's. Drug use is below average among those with

strong religious commitments." The more powerfully addictive the drug being considered, the more powerful is the

impact of church attendance in preventing its use.