Binge Drinking in Jewish and Non-Jewish White College Students Susan E. Luczak, Shoshana H. Shea, Lucinda G. Carr, Ting-Kai Li, and Tamara L. Wall Background: In the United States, religious commitment, as measured by service attendance, has an inverse relationship with alcohol consumption, heavy use, and problem use. This association, however, has not been found consistently in Jewish Americans. The present study examined the relationship between religious variables and binge drinking in Jewish and non-Jewish white college students. In addition, the association among genetic, cultural, and religious variables and binge drinking was examined in the Jewish sample alone. Methods: Participants were 132 Jewish and 147 non-Jewish white college students. All participants completed the Time-Line Follow-Back, had blood drawn for genotyping at the alcohol dehydrogenase locus ADH2, and reported their religious affiliation and the number of religious services attended in the past year. Jewish subjects also completed the Jewish Identity Scale. Results: As hypothesized, more frequent religious service attendance related to lower rates of binge drinking in non-Jews but was not related to binge drinking in Jews. Within the Jewish sample, individuals who were religiously affiliated had approximately one third the risk of binge drinking as those who were secularly affiliated, but identification with Jewish culture was not related to binge drinking. In the total sample, individuals who possessed a variant alcohol dehydrogenase allele ADH2*2 were approximately half as likely to binge drink as those who did not possess this allele. Conclusions: These results are consistent with previous studies that find an inverse relationship between religious service attendance and heavy alcohol use in Christian but not Jewish college students. Findings within the Jewish sample support theories that suggest religious, not just cultural, Jewish affiliation relates to lower levels of alcohol behavior. More research is needed to identify additional factors, including other religious, cultural, genetic, and biological influences, that protect Jewish Americans from heavy drinking. Key Words: Binge Drinking, Alcohol Dehydrogenase, Jewish, Religion, Culture. I N THE UNITED States, strong religious commitment consistently relates to lower rates of alcohol use and misuse (Cochran et al., 1988; Miller, 1998). Service atten- dance, a commonly used metric of religious behavior, has an inverse relationship with alcohol consumption, heavy use, and problem use (Burkett and White, 1974; Koenig et al., 1994). Surveys of U.S. college students found the im- portance of religion inversely related to binge drinking (defined as consuming five or more drinks during a drink- ing occasion for men and four or more drinks for women). Those who rated religion as not very important had 3.6 times the risk of binge drinking in the past 2 weeks com- pared with those who rated religion as very important (Wechsler et al., 1998). Religious commitment (measured by the average of church attendance and importance of religion) also inversely related to consuming five or more drinks in a row in the past 2 weeks in U.S. adolescents (Wallace and Bachman, 1991). It is interesting, however, that the relationship between the religious service atten- dance and lower rates of alcohol misuse has not been found in Jewish Americans (Cochran et al., 1988). In an analysis of five national surveys from 1977 to 1984 of 7500 indi- viduals, Cochran et al. (1988) found that service attendance did not significantly relate to alcohol misuse in Jews when age, race, sex, education, income, and occupation were covaried. Jewish Americans have lower rates of alcohol abuse and dependence than other religious or ethnic groups in the United States (Levav et al., 1997; Yeung and Greenwald, 1992). Lifetime estimates of alcohol abuse and dependence from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study are approx- imately 11% for Jewish men compared with 28% for non- Jewish men and 3% compared with 8% for women (Levav et al., 1997). Similarly, Jewish-American college students have low rates of heavy drinking and problem drinking From the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine (SEL, SHS, TLW), Veterans Medical Research Foundation (SEL, TLW), Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (SHS, TLW), San Diego, California; and Indiana University, School of Medicine (LGC, T-KL) Indianapolis, Indiana. Received for publication April 19, 2002; accepted September 27, 2002. This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants F31 AA05546, K02 AA00269, and P50 AA07611, and a grant from the Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation. Reprint requests: Reprint requests: Tamara L. Wall, PhD, Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System (116B), 3350 La Jolla Village Drive, San Diego, CA 92161; Fax: 858-642-6201; E-mail: twall@ucsd.edu Copyright © 2002 by the Research Society on Alcoholism. DOI: 10.1097/01.ALC.0000042150.71818.A0 0145-6008/02/2612-1773$03.00/0 ALCOHOLISM:CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH Vol. 26, No. 12 December 2002 Alcohol Clin Exp Res, Vol 26, No 12, 2002: pp 1773–1778 1773