Covariations of emotional states and alcohol consumption: Evidence from 2 years of daily data collection

Abstract

We examined inter-and intra-individual covariations of mood and alcohol consumption in a sample of 171 light, medium, and heavy alcohol consumers aged 21 and over who reported daily about drinking and mood for a period of up to 2 years. The sample was recruited by advertisements in local newspapers and referral from former respondents in Northern Vermont, USA, between July 1997 and September 2000. Participants reported daily alcohol consumption and mood via Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology. Within-subject correlations were calculated for each individual separately and analyzed via cluster analysis. The cluster solution was subsequently used as a categorical level-2 predictor in hierarchical linear modeling of daily alcohol consumption. Cluster analyses of the within-subject correlations revealed four clusters: (1) emotion-inhibited drinking (drinking combined with reduced emotional arousal, n = 12); (2) "positive emotion drinking" (drinking in combination with positive mood, n = 69), (3) "stress drinking" (drinking combined with negative mood, n = 12), and (4) "non-emotional drinking" (no relationship between alcohol consumption and mood, n = 78). Hierachical linear modeling (HLM) analyses revealed that a significant amount of random variance of the Level-1 mood slopes (38% and 40%) was accounted for by the clusters, demonstrating the predictive power of cluster membership on individual drinking patterns. Although Cluster 3 members (stress drinking) did not report significantly higher levels of alcohol consumption, they were more likely to report current and lifetime dependence symptoms. The results point to the existence of stable, but diverse drinking patterns among non-clinical alcohol consumers with potentially different implications for development into alcohol abuse and dependence.

Telephone-Based Self-Change Modules Help Stabilize Early Natural Recovery in Problem Drinkers

“…This association occurred even though participants reported no drug misuse at enrollment and infrequent drug use during the IVR interval. Greater drinking also was associated with weekends compared with weekdays, as found in prior IVR studies (e.g., Schroder and Perrine, 2007). These results provide further evidence of the co-occurring negative effects of multiple behavioral and environmental risk factors on the temporal patterning of substance use.…”

Interactive voice response technology to measure HIV-related behavior

“…In terms of dropout, only about 33 participants (75%) of the original sample were retained until the end of the 90-day self-reporting period. In comparison, similar IVR-based studies in alcohol research reported completer rates higher than 90% over self-reporting periods of up to 2 years [5,6]. Potential reasons for the differences in the completer rates may include 1) the greater sensitivity of sexual behavior self-reports; 2) lower risk perceptions or lower perceived relevance of the study questions among healthy college students; 3) stricter rules for bonus payments if calls were missed; and 4) differences in the ethnic composition of the samples.…”

“…IVR can be used for computer-assisted screening of a population [1] or in-depth daily assessments of risk behaviors [2••, [3][4][5][6]. It can be used as an external memory to promote participants' medication adherence [7] or used as a medium to relay health messages or advice intended to improve health behaviors [1].…”

“…Most daily self-monitoring studies with IVR have been conducted in alcohol research [3,5,6,19,21,23,[27][28][29]. Longitudinal analyses with these datasets detected substantial reductions in alcohol consumption over time.…”

Why We Like to Drink: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of the Rewarding and Anxiolytic Effects of Alcohol

“…A variety of nonimaging human studies have attempted to experimentally alter emotional states while administering alcohol or measuring alcohol intake (Gabel et al, 1980;Stritzke et al, 1996;Curtin et al, 1998;Schroder and Perrine, 2007), but these studies have not demonstrated a specific anxiolytic interaction between alcohol and emotional cues. Alco- Figure 2.…”