Stress and the urge to drink
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Understanding why people drink alcohol is important for the health and safety of individuals and the public. The aim of this study was to examine from a cognitive point of view the hypothesized link between drinking and stress.
METHODS: 25 scenarios were constructed by combining two items, either two life-change events or a social situation and an emotional state. In the initial three experiments, 159 male and 43 female alcoholics and 157 male and 93 female nonalcoholics in France judged the degree to which these scenarios were stressful and subsequently the degree to which they stimulated an urge to drink. In the final experiment, 126 of the male alcoholics were studied at the beginning and end of an inpatient alcohol rehabilitation program.
RESULTS: The alcoholics and nonalcoholics, regardless of gender, assigned similar stress values to the scenarios and used the same cognitive rules for combining the stress associated with two items (disjunctive rules for two life-change events and additive ones for a personal emotion combined with a social situation). They differed, however, in how they judged the urge to drink. The nonalcoholics reported little stimulus to drink from any combination of items, whereas the alcoholics not only perceived the individual items as stimulating an urge to drink but also used the same cognitive rule in judging the combined urge to drink of two items as they used in judging the combined stress. After completing rehabilitation, the…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a case-control, done in people. Its evidence level is 4 of 5 (Low · observational). Observational designs can show an association but not prove cause.
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