Drinking Motives and Drinking Consequences across Days: Differences and Similarities between Moderate, Binge, and High‐Intensity Drinking

Abstract

Background The current study examined the extent to which within‐person variation in drinking motives differentiates moderate, binge, and high‐intensity drinking; and independent associations of motives and drinking intensity with alcohol use consequences in a sample of young adult drinkers from across the United States. Methods Participants were past 30‐day drinkers in the U.S. nationally representative Monitoring the Future 12th grade sample in 2018, who also reported alcohol use during a 14‐day data collection burst 1 year later (N = 484 people, mean age 19.3 [SD 0.40], 43% female; N = 1042 drinking days) as part of the Young Adult Daily Life Study in 2019. Weighted multilevel modeling estimated within‐ and between‐person associations of drinking motives, drinking intensity (i.e., moderate [women 1–3, men 1–4 drinks], binge [women 4–7, men 5–9 drinks], and high‐intensity drinking [women 8+, men 10+ drinks]), and number of positive and negative alcohol consequences. Results On days participants reported greater enhancement and social motives, they were more likely to engage in high‐intensity (vs. binge) drinking and binge (vs. moderate) drinking and experience more positive alcohol consequences. On days participants reported greater enhancement and coping motives, they experienced more negative alcohol consequences. Binge (vs. moderate) drinking on a given day was associated with more positive and negative alcohol consequences; high‐intensity (vs. binge) drinking on a given day was associated with more negative alcohol consequences that day. Moderation analyses indicated that social motives were associated with high‐intensity (vs. binge) drinking only among college students. Conclusions Stronger drinking motives on a given day were associated with drinking intensity (enhancement and social motives) and negative consequences (enhancement and coping). High‐intensity (vs. binge or moderate) drinking was associated with more negative consequences but not more positive consequences. These results underscore that high‐intensity drinking and consequences vary across days and time‐varying, occasion‐specific risks such as current motivational context are appropriate targets for intervention.

Patterns and predictors of high-intensity drinking and implications for intervention.

“…Data suggest event-specific drinking motives and protective behavioral strategies are associated with event-specific HID, as well as the risk of specific negative outcomes. For example, on a given drinking day, reporting stronger enhancement and social drinking motives was associated with higher drinking intensity, and stronger enhancement and coping motives were associated with more negative consequences (Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021). Further, Linden-Carmichael et al (2019) found using manner of drinking strategies weakened associations between HID and passing out from drinking, and using serious harm reduction strategies weakened associations between HID and having no one sober enough to drive and experiencing regretted sexual behaviors.…”

“…The Young Adult Daily Life (YADL) Study is a longitudinal follow-up of a subsample of MTF participants who reported past 30-day alcohol use in 12th grade (Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021). YADL is designed to examine predictors and consequences of binge and HID (Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021). Although YADL is ongoing, the present study presents information from participants' initial YADL survey, completed in 2019, 1 year after the 12th-grade MTF survey.…”

“…Cross-sectional research has also identified associations between HID and negative outcomes such as fights, injuries, and arrest (Hingson et al, 2017) and mental distress (Wang, 2020). Within-person research has found that on days when individuals report HID, they also are more likely to report both positive (Patrick, Cronce, et al, 2016) and negative consequences (Linden-Carmichael et al, 2018; Patrick, Cronce, et al, 2016; Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021), including blackouts (Merrill et al, 2019). Longitudinally, HID poses a greater risk than binge drinking for traffic tickets/collisions (Evans-Polce et al, 2017), poorer performance on some measures of learning and recall (Nguyen-Louie et al, 2016), and AUD symptoms (Patrick et al, in press).…”

Daily associations between affect, drinking motives, and drinking intensity among U.S. young adults.

“…Past studies have found that up to 45% of young adults who binge drink also engage in high-intensity drinking (HID), or episodes during which females consume 8 or more drinks and males consume 10 or more drinks (Patrick, Terry-McElrath, et al, 2016), and that this level of consumption also peaks in young adulthood (Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2019; Patrick et al, 2017). High-intensity drinkers also engage in binge drinking almost twice as frequently as non-high-intensity drinkers (Patrick, Terry-McElrath, et al, 2016), and there is evidence that HID incurs additional negative consequences above that associated with binge drinking (Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021; White et al, 2016). Although it was initially thought that HID characterized a specific subset of young adult drinkers, past studies have found that the tendency to engage in HID varies more within person than it does between people (Patrick, Cronce, et al, 2016; Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021).…”

Daily Order of Alcohol and Cannabis Use Predicts Drinking Quantity on Simultaneous Use Days, but Substance Use Motives do not Moderate

“…In contrast, enhancement and coping motives for alcohol use exhibit a more complex relationship with drinking and related problems. For instance, some studies have found that young adults drinking to enhance or to cope tend to drink more heavily and experience more harms such as blackouts or developing symptoms of alcohol use disorders (Cooper, 1994;Cooper et al, 2000;Patterson et al, 2020;Simons et al, 2000), while other studies show that coping motives are not related to heavier drinking (Cook et al, 2020;Patrick & Terry-McElrath, 2021;Skalisky et al, 2019;Stevenson et al, 2019).…”