Findings suggest that the belief that spirituality is important in recovery is consistent with findings to date, but the literature needs to continue to explore ways in which spiritual interventions may help to alleviate addiction and related suffering. General findings included an inverse relationship between religiosity and substance use/abuse, reduced use among those practicing meditation protective effects of 12-step involvement during recovery. A search was conducted using all citations listed in the MEDLINE, PsychINFO, and ALTA Religion databases from 1941 to 2004 using the following search terms: substance abuse, substance dependence, addiction, religion, and spirituality. The citations were classified according to empirically derived categories. A total of 1,353 papers met the search parameters and were classified into 10 nonexclusive categories. Tables, references