Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs最新文献

Objective: The blackout rage gallon (BORG) is an excessive drinking trend popular at some colleges in the U.S and propelled by social media. Media reports depict harmful consequences of BORG use, but others view this trend as a strategy to reduce drink contamination, control alcohol intake, and minimize hangovers. This study provides the first detailed assessment of college students' perceptions and use of BORGs, including consequences and motivations for use and nonuse.

Method: Participants (age 18-25 years) were past-year college students (N=103) from both public and private U.S. institutions who reported weekly binge drinking and completed a survey assessing BORG use, motivations, and drinking-related outcomes.

Results: Participants were 20.4 years old, 62% female sex at birth, and their mean AUDIT score was 11.3±5.2. We oversampled college students reporting past-year BORG use (BORG+; n=63) relative to college students denying BORG use (BORG-; n=40). BORG+ participants consumed 9-10 standard alcohol drinks during a typical BORG event. Most reported getting buzzed or drunk (98%), nearly one-third (29%) experienced a blackout, 17% vomited, and 59% said/did something embarrassing. Regardless of these effects, two-thirds endorsed intending to engage in future BORG drinking. BORG- participants cited refraining from BORG use because it was not part of their college culture and was not effective for limiting alcohol intake.

Conclusions: The BORG trend presents another challenge for harm reduction efforts focused on curbing excessive drinking in college students. The high intensity drinking of BORG use, paired with associated blackouts, vomiting, and behavioral disinhibition, render this phenomenon as living up to its name.

Objective: Simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use is prevalent among young adults and linked with heavy use and related harms. Days with simultaneous use have been linked with poorer proximal outcomes than days involving only alcohol/cannabis, but findings are mixed. Importantly, days with simultaneous use vary greatly with respect to level and timing of use, and other substance use. Thus, all simultaneous use days may not carry the same risks, partially explaining discrepancies. We aimed to characterize heterogeneity across simultaneous use days via an innovative statistical method applied to daily data - multilevel latent class analysis (MLCA) - and identify features of days most strongly linked to same-day harms and motives.

Method: Participants were n=255 young adult college students (48% male) who completed ≤54 days of surveys on substance use behavior, yielding 1,527 person-days with simultaneous use.

Results: MLCA identified four day-level latent classes of simultaneous use occasions: Alcohol-Focused (43% of days), Cannabis-Focused (35%), Heavy Use (14%), and Early-Day Use (8%). Same-day harms were more likely on Heavy Use days than other types of days, and day-level classes varied significantly with respect to three same-day motivations for simultaneous use: to be social, because it was offered, and to have fun.

Conclusions: Simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use days are highly varied. Heavy Use Days characterized by level of alcohol/cannabis use and engagement in other substance use were most strongly linked with harms, but timing of use in a day also distinguished patterns of use. Studies investigating the role of additional substances are warranted.

Objective: Murphy et al. (2014) found that university students with a family history (FH) of alcohol problems exhibit a reduced sensitivity of alcohol demand to next-day academic responsibilities. Considering the ongoing replication crisis, the objective of this study was to replicate and extend this research in community adults, including a range of non-academic responsibilities.

Method: We conducted a secondary analysis of 461 adults who reported past-year alcohol consumption (39% women; mean age = 38.42), recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants were coded as FH+ (40%) or FH- (60%) based on reporting if any biological parents or grandparents had a history of alcohol problems. Participants completed alcohol purchase tasks involving a typical drinking situation or next-day responsibility (e.g., work, caregiving). FH status was examined as a moderator of reductions in observed indices of alcohol demand in separate analyses of covariance controlling for participant sex and severity of alcohol misuse.

Results: Alcohol demand did not significantly differ by FH status on the no-responsibility APT (ps >.56). Compared to FH- participants, FH+ participants showed a smaller magnitude reduction in the responsibility condition for breakpoint (p =.002, η_p2=.036), O_max (p =.002, η_p2=.041), and P_max (p =.001, η_p2=.040), and nonsignificant effects for intensity (p =.053, η_p2=.015).

Conclusion: These findings replicate and extend Murphy et al. (2014) by providing necessary confirmation that FH confers risk for greater alcohol consumption despite upcoming responsibilities. People with a FH of problem drinking may require specific interventions that make the impact of drinking on next-day responsibilities more salient.

Objective: Early initiation of substance use during adolescence is linked to immediate and long-term risks, including impaired cognitive development, challenges in social, academic, and psychological functioning, and increased vulnerability to addiction. This study examined whether early initiation of cigarettes, alcohol, and cannabis related to difficulty quitting.

Method: A national sample of 9,178 7-12th grade adolescents (ages 10 through 18) across 42 schools participated in a cross-sectional, epidemiologic survey of substance use among reservation-based AI and non-AI youth between 2021 and 2023. Discrete-time survival analysis estimated hazard and survival probabilities for cigarette, alcohol, and cannabis use. Multinomial logistic regression models tested age of initiation as a predictor of self-reported difficulty quitting.

Results: AI youth were more likely than non-AI youth to report initiating cigarette and cannabis use from ages 10 to 14, while hazard probabilities were similar between groups from age 15 onward. There was no consistent evidence of differences in initiation of alcohol between the two groups of adolescents. For all three substances, earlier initiation was associated with increased odds of being unable to quit (compared to being able to quit). These associations did not differ between AI and non-AI students.

Conclusions: Early prevention is needed to delay onset of substances, particularly among AI adolescents. Early initiation of substance use may signal later dependence for both AI and non-AI youth. Screening of students who report early initiation and difficulty quitting may identify the need for tertiary prevention or early treatment for dependence.

Objective: There is a substantial literature indicating brief interventions (BIs) for alcohol use disorder (AUD) are as effective as more extensive treatments. The research assessment reactivity literature, however, suggests that the protocols used to study AUD treatments can have clinical efficacy, which may account for the observed findings. The purpose of this research was to experimentally investigate the moderation of AUD treatment effects by AUD assessment protocols.

Method: Participants were recruited from the community via advertisements (e.g., Facebook, mail advertisements, posting of flyers). Eligible participants, providing informed consent, were randomized to one of four research conditions resulting from a two (Intervention: Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET) or Cognitive Behavioral Coping Skills Therapy (CBT)) by two (Assessment: infrequent-alcohol/drug focused or frequent-comprehensive) factorial design and followed for 15 months post baseline assessment.

Results: Across the entire sample, the proportion of abstinence days increased from 21.6% at baseline to 62.4% during follow-up months 13-15, and the proportion of heavy drinking days decreased from 64.9% at baseline to 18.1% during follow-up months 13-15. Although the hypothesized interaction 'intervention by assessment condition' was not supported, main effects were detected for assessment condition such that individuals assigned to the alcohol/drug focused assessment conditions reported greater abstinence and fewer heavy drinking days than their counterparts assigned to the comprehensive assessment conditions.

Conclusions: Robust BIs, such as MET, appear to yield drinking outcomes that are comparable to that of more extensive AUD treatments such as CBT. In addition, reactivity to research assessments contributed to reduced alcohol use and these effects appear to be contingent upon intervention and participant characteristics.

Objective: Understanding the relationship between people's lifetime alcohol use and their awareness of the risk of common chronic diseases from alcohol use is important for informing health messaging efforts. This paper aimed to 1) assess the level of awareness that alcohol use increases the risk of cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and 2) examine the association between lifetime drinking patterns and levels of awareness.

Method: We used data from the 2019-2020 National Alcohol Survey (NAS) that included awareness that cancer, hypertension and diabetes could result from drinking too much alcohol (yes/no/unsure), past-year alcohol use, and lifetime alcohol use operationalized as peak lifetime drinking pattern and ever having 2+ symptoms of alcohol use disorder (AUD). We conducted multinomial regressions to examine associations between lifetime alcohol use and awareness of alcohol as a risk factor for each health outcome, controlling for past-year use.

Results: Overall, 42.1% acknowledged the link between alcohol use and cancer, 52.2% between alcohol use and diabetes, and 61.3% between alcohol use and hypertension. Nearly all peak lifetime drinking pattern levels were associated with a lower likelihood of awareness of the alcohol-cancer link. Conversely, nearly all levels were associated with a higher likelihood of awareness of the link between alcohol use and hypertension, and only one level was associated with awareness of the alcohol-diabetes link.

Conclusions: Awareness of alcohol's effects on chronic diseases varies by type of disease. Lifetime alcohol use is a relevant factor for understanding levels of awareness of alcohol's health effects.

Objective: Participation in 12-step groups (TS), such as Alcoholics Anonymous, confers benefits among individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD), and one candidate mechanism underlying these effects is reductions in impulsivity. Using a multidimensional assessment of impulsivity, the current study examined delay discounting (DD) and impulsive personality traits in a longitudinal cohort of adults with AUD initiating a significant recovery attempt.

Methods: A prospective matched-sample cohort study design compared participants who reported a clinically meaningful increase in TS attendance (i.e., increase of ≥1 meetings/week; n=77) from enrollment to 6 weeks to a matched control group who did not increase attendance (n=77). Drinking was assessed using the Timeline Followback (% drinking days [%DD], % heavy drinking days [%HDD]); impulsivity was assessed using the 5-trial DD task and five UPPS-P subscales. Mediation models evaluated whether impulsivity explained the relationship between increased TS attendance and alcohol outcomes.

Results: Compared to matched controls, participants who increased TS significantly exhibited reduced %DD and %HDD (ps < 0.001), as well as Negative Urgency (i.e., acting out due to negative emotions) and Lack of Perseverance (i.e., failure to persist in tasks) (ps = 0.03) after their recovery attempt. Reductions in impulsivity, however, did not mediate the association between increased TS attendance and drinking.

Conclusions: Increased TS attendance was associated with significant reductions in drinking and certain impulsivity traits in early AUD recovery. However, while the changes were contemporaneous, impulsivity did not explain the benefits of TS effects. Future research should evaluate this hypothesis in larger samples and over longer follow-up periods.

Background: The multistage model of substance use proposes that reinforcement mechanisms and motives for use change as individuals develop substance use disorders, with positive reinforcement driving substance use when substance use disorder symptoms are absent/mild and negative reinforcement becoming dominant when substance use disorder symptoms are more severe. We aimed to determine whether event-level associations between affect, cannabis use, motives for use, and heaviness of use were moderated by cannabis use problem severity, consistent with the multistage model of substance use.

Methods: We used EMA data (2 observations per day for 14 days) from 571 young adult females who regularly used cannabis. The sample included a majority sexual minority women and gender diverse individuals (77.6%).

Results: Elevated anxious affect was concurrently associated with coping motives for cannabis use and longer duration of intoxication at the event-level but only among those with more severe CU problems. Further, positive affect was concurrently associated with a higher likelihood of endorsing enhancement motives for the full sample, but this association was stronger for those with fewer CU problems. However, many other associations between affect and cannabis use outcomes were not moderated by severity of CU problems.

Discussion: Some findings were consistent with what would be expected based on the multistage model. However, results also suggest that positive reinforcement may continue to drive cannabis use among those with more severe CU problems which is not consistent with what would be expected based on the multistage model.

Objective: To identify latent classes of substance use behaviors (i.e., alcohol and illicit drug use) and their correlates among transgender women and transfeminine nonbinary adults.

Method: Baseline data (March 2018 to August 2020; n=1,614) from [blinded] were used to identify latent substance use classes and report latent class membership probabilities (γ) and item-response probabilities (ρ). We assigned participants to the class with their highest probability of class membership and assessed associations with socioeconomic conditions. We reported adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for each correlate.

Results: Mean age was 33.0 years old (standard deviation=12.1), and 45.3% were Non-Latina/e, White. We identified four classes: no illicit drug use (γ=0.63), alcohol misuse and cannabis use (γ=0.26), polysubstance use (γ=0.062), and opioid and cannabis use (γ=0.046). Compared to the no illicit drug use class, met need for medical gender affirmation was associated with lower odds of being in the polysubstance use and opioid and cannabis use classes, and housing security and lack of arrest were associated with lower odds of being in the alcohol misuse and cannabis use, polysubstance use, and opioid and cannabis use classes. For example, compared to those food insecure most or all of the time, never food insecure had lower odds of being in the polysubstance use class (aOR=0.22, 95%CI=0.09-0.52) versus the no illicit drug use class. Living with HIV was associated with greater odds of polysubstance use.

Conclusions: Met need for medical gender affirmation and better socioeconomic conditions may be protective for alcohol misuse and/or polysubstance use. Interventions aimed at improving socioeconomic conditions among transgender women and transfeminine nonbinary adults may improve substance use outcomes.

Objective: Experimentation with alcohol and other substances during the early adolescent period is associated with a myriad of potentially deleterious health outcomes. The present analysis utilized data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development^SM Study (ABCD Study®) to investigate the relationships between risk perception, susceptibility to peer influence, and substance use in early adolescence.

Method: Participants completed a Social Influence Task (SIT) in which they were asked to rate the riskiness of various hypothetical scenarios. They were then presented with a risk rating that had ostensibly been provided by their peers and were asked to rate each scenario a second time. Mixed effects logistic regression models were used to evaluate the relationship between risk perception (initial risk rating), susceptibility to peer influence (risk rating change), and future substance use.

Results: Higher initial risk perception was associated with lower odds of future substance use. Greater susceptibility to peer influence in the positive direction (i.e., being more swayed by peers to say that a scenario was more risky than the participant had originally decided) was associated with lower odds of future substance use as well.

Conclusions: These findings highlight the potential importance of leveraging positive peer influence as a means for affecting substance use outcomes.