Negative mood-induced alcohol-seeking is greater in young adults who report depression symptoms, drinking to cope, and subjective reactivity.

Abstract

Acute negative mood powerfully motivates alcohol-seeking behavior, but it remains unclear whether sensitivity to this effect is greater in drinkers who report depression symptoms, drinking to cope, and subjective reactivity. To examine these questions, 128 young adult alcohol drinkers (ages 18–25) completed questionnaires of alcohol use disorder symptoms, depression symptoms, and drinking to cope with negative affect. Baseline alcohol choice was measured by preference to enlarge alcohol versus food thumbnail images in two-alternative forced-choice trials. Negative mood was then induced by depressive statements and music, before alcohol choice was tested. Subjective reactivity was indexed by increased sadness pre- to post-mood induction. Baseline alcohol choice correlated with alcohol dependence symptoms (p = .001), and drinking coping motives (ps ≤ .01). Mood induction increased alcohol choice and subjective sadness overall (ps < .001). The mood-induced increase in alcohol choice was associated with depression symptoms (p = .007), drinking to cope (ps ≤ .03), and subjective reactivity (p = .007). The relationship between mood-induced alcohol choice and drinking to cope remained significant after covarying for other drinking motives. Furthermore, the three predictors (depression, drinking to cope, and subjective reactivity) accounted for unique variance in mood-induced alcohol choice (ps ≥ .03), and collectively accounted for 18% of the variance (p < .001). These findings validate the pictorial alcohol choice task as sensitive to the relative value of alcohol and acute negative mood. The findings also accord with the core prediction of negative reinforcement theory that sensitivity to the motivational impact of negative mood on alcohol-seeking behavior may be an important mechanism that links depression and alcohol dependence.

Alcohol use disorder symptoms are associated with greater relative value ascribed to alcohol, but not greater discounting of costs imposed on alcohol

“…This finding replicates previous studies which have also found that alcohol use disorder symptoms are associated with preferential alcohol choice (Hardy and Hogarth 2017; Hardy et al 2017; Hogarth et al 2018) and accords with studies which have found that cocaine dependence symptoms are associated with preferential cocaine choice (Moeller et al 2013; Moeller et al 2009) and that tobacco dependence symptom severity is associated with preferential tobacco choice (Chase et al 2013; Hogarth and Chase 2011). These findings provide powerful, converging support for the prediction of behavioural economic theory that drug dependence is driven by the ascription of greater relative value to drug rewards (Bickel et al 2014; Hursh et al 2005; MacKillop 2016).…”

Risk Factors Associated with Alcohol Use in Early Adolescence among American Inner-City Youth: A Longitudinal Study

“…Supporting this notion, anxiety symptoms predicted less alcohol consumption by the seventh grade in our study. Thus, no evidence was found in this early age group for the negative affect regulation pathway model which suggests that people drink in order to reduce or escape negative emotions such as depression and anxiety (Hogarth et al, 2018;Mezquita et al, 2018). Interestingly, we found that PTS was associated with less frequent concurrent alcohol use in year one, but not associated with alcohol use frequency at year two in the SEM analysis.…”

“…In contrast, the negative reinforcement theory links problematic alcohol use to internalizing behaviors by suggesting that it may serve as a regulator of negative affect, i.e., alcohol is consumed to escape or avoid negative emotions such as depression and anxiety (Mezquita et al, 2018). In line with this, the association between negative mood induced by depressive statements/ sad music and an alcohol preference (vs food preference) has been shown to be greater in young adults who report depressive symptoms (Hogarth, Hardy, Mathew, & Hitsman, 2018).…”

Addiction is driven by excessive goal-directed drug choice under negative affect: translational critique of habit and compulsion theory

“…These associations have been found in both clinical [15,113,114,116,117,[125][126][127] and non-clinical samples [10, 26, 111-113, 115, 128]. Percent drug choice also increases with latency to relapse [129], abstinence [7], depression and anxiety symptoms and self-reported drinking to cope with negative affect [10,15,113,115], and is decreased by health warnings and satiety [111,130,131], by raising the magnitude of the alternative reward [14,112,118,121,[132][133][134], and by increasing the effort [59], and delay of the drug choice [112,133,134]. Thus, like economic demand, concurrent choice tasks index drug value, and this is increased in individuals with dependence and associated psychiatric risk factors.…”

“…Different designs use points for rewards [111,112], pictures of rewards [7,[113][114][115][116][117] or consumption of rewards [14,[118][119][120][121][122][123][124]. Preferential drug choice is reliably associated with the severity of dependence to heroin [125], cocaine [116,117,126,127], alcohol [10,15,26,112,113,115], and tobacco [15,111,114,124,128]. These associations have been found in both clinical [15,113,114,116,117,[125][126][127] and non-clinical samples [10, 26, 111-113, 115, 128].…”