ABSTRACT
The practice of meditation has been suggested as a potential treatment technique for the problems of alcoholism and drug abuse. M. Shafii, R. Lavely, and R. Jaffe report the results of a questionnaire study comparing the frequency of alcohol use for subjects who had practiced Transcendental Meditation (TM), for periods up to 39 months, with that of a nonmeditation control group. In terms of alcohol use, the percentage of subjects describing themselves as "heavy drinkers" dropped from 2.7% of the sample, prior to regular TM practice, to 0.4%, after 22 to 33 months of practice. Several problems were discussed concerning the difficulties of investigating TM in a control group design. It is particularly difficult to devise comparison groups which control for such factors as biased subject selection and expectation effects which are associated with TM movement. Heavy social drinkers were selected in order to explore the usefulness of meditation and relaxation training in the prevention and treatment of problem drinking.
