Relationship Between Alcohol Use, Spirituality, and Coping

Authors investigated a relationship between the frequency of alcohol consumption, spirituality, and coping with everyday life events in a cross-sectional, community-based sample of 320 adults in Ukraine, the country with one of the highest alcohol consumption levels in the world. Face-to-face interviews with participants took place in rural and urban locations across Eastern, Southern, and Central Ukraine. Results of the ordinary least-squares regression suggest that a higher frequency of alcohol consumption was related with the lower use of positive reappraisal (beta = -.27, p < .001), higher use of escape-avoidance (beta = .23, p < .01) and confrontive (beta = .15, p < .05) coping strategies, lower spirituality (beta = -.20, p < .001), and younger age (beta = -.11, p < .05). On the whole, current findings suggest that specific coping behaviors, younger age, and lower spirituality are involved in higher frequency of alcohol consumption among Ukrainian adults.