We examined among college students (N = 530; 276 women) the moderating effects of avoidance (coping) and appetitive (social-enhancement) drinking motives on the within-person associations between anxious and depressive affect and drinking frequency and quantity. Once per year for up to 4 years participants completed standard measures of drinking motives and retrospective reports of affect and drinking in the previous month. In addition, each year they completed a 30-day daily diary of affect and drinking. Results from models examining both the retrospective and aggregate daily data indicated that individuals with high compared with low social-enhancement motives showed stronger positive associations among changes in monthly negative affect and drinking frequency. Weak evidence was found for the predicted moderating effects of coping motives, although some results indicated that its effects were contingent on levels of social-enhancement motives. Our findings suggest that appetitive drinking motives might play an integral role in stress- and negative-affect related drinking among college students.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine among college students (N = 458; 249 women) whether drinking to cope (DTC) motives moderate the effect of daily negative mood states in predictin...

Objective: People with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are at high risk for substance use, and PTSD is common among women experiencing intimate partner violence. Considering the effects of both PTSD and substance use, such as poorer treatment outcomes and greater health/behavior problems, women experiencing intimate partner violence are a high-risk, under-researched group. Methods: We utilized a micro-longitudinal study design to assess daily drug and alcohol use over 21 days among 41 women experiencing intimate partner violence recruited from the community. Results: Participants were about 45 years old (M = 45.1, SD = 8.5) and mostly African American (n = 32, 78%). Co-occurrence of drug and alcohol use was reported on 19.0% of days, while drug use alone occurred on 13.4% of days and alcohol use on 12.1%. Fifteen percent of participants met current PTSD criteria, with a mean symptom severity rating of 15.90 (SD = 10.94, range 0 to 47). Women with PTSD, compared to those without, were nearly 15 times more likely to have days of co-occurrence of drug and alcohol use (p = .037) and nearly 7 times more likely to have days of drug use alone (p = .044). Conclusions: These findings indicate that the combination of intimate partner violence and PTSD may make women especially prone to daily co-occurring drug and alcohol use or drug use alone. Further research is needed to explore this association and examine the need for integrated programs to support victims' health, prevent the development of substance use problems, and facilitate recovery from PTSD and substance use.