Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Corresponding Author: Lynsay A. Research on the relation of stress to alcohol consumption is inconsistent regarding the direction of effects, and this association has been shown to vary by sex and type of stress. We sought to build upon the stress-drinking literature by examining the direction of the stress-drinking association over time as well as sex and stressor differences using daily data.
Baseline daily hassles were examined as an alternative measure of stress. Generalized estimating equations GEEs were conducted to test the stress-drinking association accounting for alcohol dependency at baseline and sex and stressor type as moderators.
IVR daily stress predicted increased alcohol consumption the following day, whereas baseline level of daily hassles did not. Examining the opposite direction of effects, IVR ratings of daily alcohol consumption predicted decreased next-day stress.
Stress predicted higher alcohol consumption the next day for men but there was no significant association for women. For both sexes, drinking predicted decreased stress the next day, but this effect was stronger for women. This study generally supported the drinking to cope and self-medication hypotheses, with findings that increased stress led to increased drinking. The time-varying relation between stress and alcohol appears to be sex- and measure- specific, however.
Therefore, interventions targeted at stress management found to be effective for one sex should not be presumed to be applicable to the other. Most prominent theories of addiction e. These theories suggest that drugs and alcohol provide negative reinforcement via relief from stress and positive reinforcement via mood enhancement, both of which lead to increased risk for addiction. Studies testing the theoretical assumption that the direction of causation leads from stress to substance use have produced inconsistent findings Pohorecky, ; Sinha, Therefore, further exploration in this area is needed to improve our understanding of the complex relation between stress and alcohol.
