ABSTRACT. Objective:The goal of the present study was to examine whether within-person, episode-specifi c changes in drinking-to-cope (DTC) motivation from the previous evening were associated with concurrent daily mood and fatigue-related symptoms among college student drinkers (N = 1,421; 54% female). Method: We conducted an Internet-based daily diary study in which students reported over 30 days on their previous night's drinking level and motivation and their current mood (i.e., sadness, anxiety, anger/hostility, and positive mood) and fatigue-related symptoms. Hypotheses were tested using hierarchical linear models in which the current day's outcome was predicted by last night's levels of DTC motivation and drinking, controlling for drinking to enhance motivation, sex, current day's physical symptoms and drinking, and yesterday's level of the outcome. Subsequent models also predicted outcomes 2 days following the drinking event. Results: Relative increases in previous night's DTC motivation were associated with higher levels of current day negative mood and fatigue-related symptoms and lower levels of positive mood. Also, the association between episodespecifi c DTC motivation and negative mood was stronger in the positive direction when individuals reported higher levels of nonsocial drinking from the previous night. Last, episode-specifi c DTC showed similar associations with sadness and anger/hostility 2 days after the drinking event. Conclusions: The results are generally consistent with the posited attention allocation and ego-depletion mechanisms. Findings suggest that the deleterious effects of repeated episodes of DTC, over time, could help to explain the increased likelihood of alcohol-related problems seen in prior studies. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 75, 766-774, 2014)

Objective Theory suggests that state- and trait-like factors should interact in predicting drinking to cope (DTC) motivation, yet no research to date has demonstrated this at the drinking episode level of analysis. Thus, we examined whether daily variation in positive and negative affect and avoidance and active coping were associated with DTC motivation during discrete drinking episodes and whether these associations were moderated by tension-reduction expectancies and other person-level risk factors. Methods Using a secure website, 722 college student drinkers completed a one-time survey regarding their tension reduction expectancies and then reported daily for 30 days on their affect, coping strategies, drinking behaviors and motives for drinking. Results Individuals reported higher levels of DTC motivation on days when negative affect and avoidance coping were high and positive affect was low. We found only little support for the predicted interactive effects among the day- and person-level predictors. Conclusion Our results support the state and trait conceptualizations of DTC motivation and provide evidence for the antecedent roles of proximal levels of daily affect and avoidance coping. Our inconsistent results for interaction effects including day-level antecedents raises the possibility that some of these synergistic processes might not generalize across level of analysis.

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