No abstract

The purpose of this study was to test (a) whether drinking motives predict event-level drinking on weekend evenings; (b) whether the number of friends present in social situations was associated with drinking on weekend evenings; and (c) whether drinking motives moderate the association between friends present and drinking. Method: We linked individual-level drinking motives (measured at baseline) to event-level data assessed every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening over 5 weeks. The number of drinks and male and female friends present in the situation were assessed at 9 P.M., 10 P.M., 11 P.M., midnight, and 1 A.M. In total, 197 young adults (51.3% male) completed 11,516 event-level assessments. Results: Multilevel models by gender revealed that higher enhancement motives predicted a greater number of drinks consumed in a given moment, but only among women. The higher the number of male and female friends present in a situation, the more drinks consumed by both genders. Last, drinking motives moderated the association between the number of friends present and the number of drinks. For women, higher enhancement motives predicted more drinks in situations with more male friends. For men, higher coping motives predicted more drinks in situations with no friends and in situations with more female friends. Lower coping motives predicted more drinks with more male friends. Higher conformity motives predicted fewer drinks with more female friends. Conclusions: Drinking motives appear to moderate event-level factors rather than directly predict drinking on weekend evenings. Depending on the motives for drinking, event-level factors (e.g., friends present in a situation) have a strong effect on an individual's drinking.

In a nondependent sample, cognitive biases for SA pictures could not be associated with drinking directly. However, a cognitive bias for SA pictures moderated the association between alcohol use and number of friends present. As most observed effects were gender and situation specific, replication of these effects is warranted.

Alcohol is mainly consumed in social settings, in which people often adapt their drinking behaviour to that of others, also called imitation of drinking. Yet, it remains unclear what drives this drinking in a social setting. In this study, we expected to see stronger brain and behavioural responses to social compared to non‐social alcohol cues, and these responses to be associated with drinking in a social setting. The sample consisted of 153 beer‐drinking males, aged 18–25 years. Brain responses to social alcohol cues were measured during an alcohol cue‐exposure task performed in an fMRI scanner. Behavioural responses to social alcohol cues were measured using a stimulus‐response compatibility task, providing an index of approach bias towards these cues. Drinking in a social setting was measured in a laboratory mimicking a bar environment. Specific brain responses to social alcohol cues were observed in the bilateral superior temporal sulcus and the left inferior parietal lobe. There was no approach bias towards social alcohol cues specifically; however, we did find an approach bias towards alcohol (versus soda) cues in general. Brain responses and approach bias towards social alcohol cues were unrelated and not associated with actual drinking. Thus, we found no support for a relation between drinking in a social setting on the one hand, and brain cue‐reactivity or behavioural approach biases to social alcohol cues on the other hand. This suggests that, in contrast to our hypothesis, drinking in a social setting may not be driven by brain or behavioural responses to social alcohol cues.

: In this study in healthy moderate alcohol consumers, we observe that one month of alcohol abstinence results in decreased gamma-glutamyl transferase levels, which return to baseline levels after resumption of alcohol consumption.

Impaired brain processing of alcohol-related rewards has been suggested to play a central role in alcohol use disorder. Yet, evidence remains inconsistent and mainly originates from studies in which participants passively observe alcohol cues or taste alcohol. Here, we designed a protocol in which beer consumption was predicted by incentive cues and contingent on instrumental action closer to real life situations.We predicted that anticipating and receiving beer (compared with water) would elicit activity in the brain reward network and that this activity would correlate with drinking level across participants.The sample consisted of 150 beer-drinking males, aged 18 to 25 years. Three groups were defined based on alcohol use disorders identification test (AUDIT) scores: light drinkers (n = 39), at-risk drinkers (n = 64), and dependent drinkers (n = 47). fMRI measures were obtained while participants engaged in the beer incentive delay task involving beer-and water-predicting cues followed by real sips of beer or water.During anticipation, outcome notification and delivery of beer compared with water, higher activity was found in a reward-related brain network including the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and amygdala. Yet, no activity was observed in the striatum, and no differences were found between the groups.Our results reveal that anticipating, obtaining, and tasting beer activates parts of the brain reward network, but that these brain responses do not differentiate between different drinking levels.

No abstract

Drinking heavily in a short period is associated with significant health risks. However, little is known about when heavy drinking occurs during an evening. Recently, research found that individuals increase their drinking pace across the evening, speeding up their drinking. The current study examines whether this speeding up is different depending on when individuals start to drink in the evening. Data on alcohol consumption were collected among 197 young adults in the Netherlands (48.7% female, M age ϭ 20.8 SD ϭ 1.7) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings for 5 consecutive weeks using questionnaires send to participants' smartphone every hour between 9 p.m.-1 a.m. The final sample consisted of 10,144 questionnaires across 2,781 evenings. On evenings when individuals started to drink early (between 8 and 9 p.m.), more alcohol was consumed in the first drinking hour, yet no increase in acceleration was found compared to evenings when individuals started later. Moreover, starting later resulted in a lower overall evening consumption and less binge-drinking episodes compared to starting earlier. The results indicate that when individuals start drinking later in the evening they do not tend to catch up the "missed" drinks, that is they do not increase their drinking faster when starting later in the evening, and they drink less heavily. Therefore, motivating young adults to postpone their first drink in the evening could help heavy drinking young adults to drink less on weekend evenings.