How drinking motives determine alcohol use in young adults.

*Disclaimer: Please note that parts of this English blog were automatically translated.*

Alcohol use has many negative consequences, especially for people whose brains are still developing. Young adults are the group that uses alcohol the most. Therefore, it is essential to understand the different motives why young adults use alcohol. With this, we can learn how to prevent use.

Previous research indicates the strong relationship between personality traits and drinking motives in young adults’ alcohol use¹. Drinking motives consist of possible reasons why a person consumes alcohol. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic shows the influence of the environment on alcohol use². In this blog, I discuss the relationship (1) between personality traits and drinking motives, and (2) the influence of COVID-19 during and after lockdown measures on various motives of alcohol use among young adults. Specific personality traits, such as extraversion, impulsivity, neuroticism and anxiety sensitivity, play an important role in how adolescents use alcohol¹. Young adults who score high on extraversion and impulsivity tend to use alcohol to enhance positive emotions and promote social interactions. This group often seeks pleasure and excitement and is attracted to the social aspects of alcohol use, as seen while going out. On the other hand, young adults who score high on “neuroticism” and score low on “friendliness” use alcohol as a means of coping with negative emotions. For this group, alcohol often acts as a coping-driven mechanism to relieve stress and negative emotions. For example, anxiety-prone youth, who fear the physical and psychological consequences of their feelings of anxiety, use alcohol to reduce their symptoms and calm themselves¹ The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures affected the drinking behaviour of young adults. Studies on young adults’ alcohol use during this period show that, on average, alcohol use decreased². The decrease in alcohol use was mainly due to those who used substances to enhance positive emotions before the pandemic. This was less possible during the pandemic due to social constraints such as pub closures and failure to attend festivals^3,4. In contrast, among young adults who had coping-motivated reasons increased their alcohol use; job loss, financial hardship, loneliness, fear of contracting COVID-19, and insecurity as a result of COVID-19 contributed to this^3,5,6. After the lockdown measures were lifted, we saw a “rebound” effect in terms of alcohol consumption. For those young adults who drank a lot of alcohol before the pandemic because of social motives, we see that they rebounded to the old alcohol use after the pandemic, partly because there are again social opportunities to drink alcohol⁴. What research lacks, however, is how alcohol use among coping-motivated young adults evolved in the post-pandemic period. From our own analysis of data collected by the Public Health Service (GGD) shortly after the lockdown measures, we see that the association between negative emotions and substance use is strongest among women who have experienced multiple forms of maltreatment (both childhood and recent). Abuse is defined here as at least once being bullied, kicked, or kissed without consent. However, these correlations are based on a single measurement moment, which complicates the direction of cause-and-effect evidence. Future research will need to reveal the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in this group of young adults so that appropriate measures can be taken. This blog was written by Rutger Carelse (Radboud University) for RAD-blog, the blog on smoking, alcohol, drugs and diet.