Adolescent Sleep Quality and Alcohol Use: An Initial Examination of the Serial Indirect Effects of Anxiety Symptoms and Coping Motives for Alcohol Use.

Background: Insufficient sleep and insomnia are associated with alcohol use as well as anxiety during adolescence and young adulthood. A negative reinforcement path to explain the association between sleep difficulties and alcohol misuse has been proposed. Within this pathway, it is speculated that while sober, insomnia and insufficient sleep lead to increased anxiety as well as anxiolytic responses to alcohol, thereby increasing the risk for both alcohol use and alcohol use problems. No work to date has examined the negative reinforcement path to alcohol use among adolescents who have consumed alcohol. Objectives: The current study aims to address this gap in the literature by examining if sleep quality is related to adolescent alcohol use problems and frequency through serial indirect effects of adolescent anxiety symptoms and coping motives for alcohol use. A total of 147 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 years (Mage = 16.31; SD = 0.96) from all geographic regions in the US were recruited using social media platforms (i.e., Facebook and Instagram). Participants who reported having tried alcohol at least once completed self-report measures to examine sleep quality, anxiety symptoms, alcohol use problems, alcohol use frequency, and coping motives for alcohol use. Results: Adolescent sleep quality was found to be associated with higher levels of both alcohol use problems and alcohol use frequency through the serial indirect effect of anxiety symptoms and coping motives for alcohol use. Conclusions: Overall, these findings represent a step towards understanding the complex relationship between sleep quality, alcohol, anxiety, and coping motives among adolescents.

Maternal Parenting Stress, Disengagement Strategies for Managing Parenting Stress, and Hazardous Alcohol Use among Mothers of Adolescents.

Objective: According to the reward- stress dysregulation model of addiction and parenting, parenting stress may play a critical role in the etiology and maintenance of substance misuse. To date, limited work has examined how parenting stress may relate to hazardous alcohol use among mothers of adolescents. The present study examined if parenting stress interacted with maternal stress responses (i.e., disengagement coping, involuntary disengagement stress responses) in relation to maternal hazardous alcohol use. Method: Two hundred and fifty-three mothers (n = 147 hazardous alcohol users; 58% of the sample) of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 years participated in the current study. Mothers were recruited using Qualtrics panel services. Mothers reported on their parenting stress, strategies for managing parenting stress, and use of alcohol. Mothers also reported basic demographic information (Mage = 41.10 years, 86.6% identified as white, 81.1% of mothers were married). Interaction analyses were used to test hypotheses. Results: Maternal parenting stress interacted with maternal involuntary disengagement stress responses in relation to maternal hazardous alcohol use, such that at average and high levels of disengagement stress responses, parenting stress was associated with hazardous alcohol use. These results were robust to covariates (i.e., family income, maternal anxiety symptoms, maternal depressive symptoms, general levels of maternal stress, maternal cigarette use). Maternal disengagement coping strategies were not related to maternal hazardous alcohol use. Conclusion: Results suggest that parenting stress and involuntary disengagement stress responses may be associated with hazardous alcohol use among mothers of adolescents.

Effects of negative incentive shifts in food reward on rats' consumption of concurrent ethanol solutions.

Frustration stress, typically operationalized as the unexpected loss of reinforcement, has been shown to engender substance use. Abrupt reductions in reinforcer magnitude likely also function as frustration stressors. These negative incentive shifts were previously shown to produce tap- and sweetened-water drinking in rats. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether these shifts in food reward would occasion oral ethanol self-administration. Nine male Long-Evans rats operated on a two-component multiple fixed-ratio schedule with signaled components producing either a large (4 pellets) or small (1pellet) reinforcer. Components were pseudorandomly arranged to present 4 transitions between past and upcoming reinforcer magnitudes: small-to-large, small-to-small, large-to-large, and large-to-small (negative incentive shift). Experiment 1 investigated the effects of negative incentive shifts on consumption of concurrent, freely available 10% sucrose, 10% sucrose plus 10% ethanol, and following sucrose fading, 10% ethanol. Experiment 2 entailed continuation of schedule contingencies with a dose manipulation of 4 ethanol concentrations (0, 5, 10, and 20%) to assess dose-dependent differences in transition-type control and consumption. A lever-press extinction condition was then conducted with 10% ethanol availability. In this novel model of frustration stress, negative incentive shifts prompted ethanol self-administration at each dose investigated, whereas the other transitions did not.