Abstract
Adolescent solitary drinking may represent an informative divergence from normative behavior, with important implications for understanding risk for alcohol-use disorders later in life. Within a self-medication framework, we hypothesized that solitary alcohol use would be associated with drinking in response to negative affect and that such a pattern of drinking would predict alcohol problems in young adulthood. We tested these predictions in a longitudinal study in which we examined whether solitary drinking in adolescence (ages 12-18) predicted alcohol-use disorders in young adulthood (age 25) in 466 alcohol-using teens recruited from clinical programs and 243 alcohol-using teens recruited from the community. Findings showed that solitary drinking was associated with drinking in response to negative affect during adolescence and predicted alcohol problems in young adulthood. Results indicate that drinking alone is an important type of alcohol-use behavior that increases risk for the escalation of alcohol use and the development of alcohol problems.
Highlights
Adolescent solitary drinking may represent an informative divergence from normative behavior, with important implications for understanding risk for alcohol-use disorders later in life
In the research reported here, we examined the association of adolescent solitary drinking with reports of drinking in response to both positive and negative affect
The current longitudinal study characterized solitary drinking in 466 alcohol-using teens recruited from clinical programs that included or focused on addictions treatment and in 243 alcohol-using teens recruited from the community, all of whom were followed into young adulthood
Summary
Adolescent solitary drinking may represent an informative divergence from normative behavior, with important implications for understanding risk for alcohol-use disorders later in life. The cross-sectional nature of these studies, prohibits drawing conclusions about the temporal relationship between variables These studies have tended to assess counts of solitary-drinking occurrences, which is problematic given that greater frequency of drinking is likely associated with both social- and solitary-drinking contexts. Eighth-grade solitary drinkers, compared with social-only drinkers, were more likely to endorse a single item assessing alcohol problems at age 23 (i.e., alcohol use that negatively affected finances, home life, work life, relationships, or legal status) even after accounting for eighth-grade quantity and frequency of alcohol use In this school sample, adolescents reported very little alcohol use (on average, one to two drinks on three occasions in the past year) and very few individuals (approximately 6%) reported alcohol problems at age 23. Because solitary drinking may be a rather distinct type of alcohol use behavior, it is important to understand whether it is associated with reports of drinking in response to negative or positive affect. Tomlinson and Brown (2012) found that drinking alone was associated with depression symptoms among eighth graders, but they did not measure
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