Religious Involvement, Financial Strain, and Poly-Drug Use: Exploring the Moderating Role of Meaning in Life

ABSTRACT

Background: Research indicates that greater involvement in religion is associated with lower rates of substance use and misuse. However, religion is a complex construct that can be assessed in many ways. The purpose of this study is to explore a dimension of religion that has not been evaluated in previous research on poly-drug use: a religious sense of meaning in life. Objectives: It is hypothesized that a religious sense of meaning in life will offset (i.e., moderate) the effects of chronic financial strain on poly-drug use. In order to instill greater confidence in the findings, the moderating role of a religious sense of meaning in life is compared and contrasted with a general sense of meaning in life. Methods: The data are provided by a recent nationwide survey of adults of all ages in the United States (N = 2,622). The relationships among the core study constructs are evaluated with ordinary least squares multiple regression. Results: The results indicate that a greater religious sense of meaning in life buffers the effects of financial strain on poly-drug use. In contrast, a general sense of meaning in life does not appear to perform a similar stress-buffering function. Conclusions/Importance: The findings from this study are important because they provide greater insight into the potentially important ways in which involvement in religion may be associated with poly-drug use.

KEYWORDS:

• Religion
• poly-drug use
• stress
• meaning in life

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant 40077).

Notes

1 As anticipated, the measure of poly-drug use was skewed (i.e., only 10% of the sample engaged in poly drug use in the past 30 days). The data were reanalyzed after the poly-drug outcome was log-transformed (to the base 10). The findings were identical to the results that emerged with the raw data. More specifically, the interaction between financial strain and religious meaning was significant at the .005 level in both sets of analyses.