By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Choosing to alter your relationship with alcohol and drink moderately can be achieved through mindfulness and deliberate behavior modifications. Mindfulness allows you to become aware of your ongoing moment-to-moment experience. It is the opposite of “checking out.” When you choose to tune in to the present moment and tap into your ability to increase self-awareness, changes in problematic drinking habits can occur.” – Laura Schenck
Inappropriate use of alcohol is a major societal problem. In fact, about 25% of US adults have engaged in binge drinking in the last month and 7% have what is termed an alcohol use disorder. Alcohol abuse is very dangerous and frequently fatal. Nearly 88,000 people in the US and 3.3 million globally die from alcohol-related causes annually, making it the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Drunk driving accounted for over 10,000 deaths; 31% of all driving fatalities. Excessive alcohol intake has been shown to contribute to over 200 diseases including alcohol dependence, liver cirrhosis, cancers, and injuries. It is estimated that over 5% of the burden of disease and injury worldwide is attributable to alcohol consumption.
Alcohol abuse often develops during adolescence and it on display with college students where about four out of five college students drink alcohol and about half of those consume alcohol through binge drinking. About 25 percent of college students report academic consequences of their drinking including missing class, falling behind, doing poorly on exams or papers, and receiving lower grades overall. More than 150,000 students develop an alcohol-related health problem.
Alcohol abuse can have dire consequences as 1,825 college students die each year from alcohol-related unintentional injuries and between 1.2 and 1.5 percent of students indicate that they tried to commit suicide within the past year due to drinking or drug use. But, drinking has widespread consequence to not only the students but also the college communities, and families. More than 690,000 students are assaulted by another student who has been drinking. More than 97,000 students are victims of alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape. 599,000 students receive unintentional injuries while under the influence of alcohol.
These facts clearly highlight the need to explore methods to control excessive alcohol intake. One potential method is mindfulness as it has been shown to assist in the control of alcohol intake and in recovery from alcohol addiction . So it would make sense to further explore the effects of mindfulness on alcohol intake in college students, in particular, how mindfulness affects the motivations for alcohol intake by college students. In today’s Research News article “Drinking Motives Mediate the Negative Associations between Mindfulness Facets and Alcohol Outcomes among College Students”
Or see below or for full text see
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4388773/
Roos and colleagues addressed this question by assessing mindfulness, drinking behavior, and motives for drinking in college students who were self-reported drinkers.
They found that three of the five mindfulness facets were negatively associated with drinking motives. When the facets of mindfulness of describing experience, non-judging of experience, and acting with awareness were high, there were lower levels of drinking to cope with a poor mood, drinking out of conformity, social drinking, and drinking to enhance mood. In turn, when these motives were high, with the exception of social drinking, there were higher levels of alcohol use and alcohol related problems. Hence, mindfulness appears to act by lowering motives for drinking and this in turn lowers amounts and problems with alcohol.
These are potentially important findings. If mindfulness skills can moderate the motives for drinking, then mindfulness training may be very helpful for college students to control their drinking. Mindfulness skills are known to improve emotion regulation, making individuals better at appreciating their emotions but acting more adaptively and appropriately to them. This undercuts the motives for drinking that involve emotions. Mindfulness, by making the individuals more aware of exactly how they are feeling and more in touch with what is happening around them, makes them better able to recognize what is driving them toward drinking, and thereby be better able to adapt and drink appropriately.
It should be kept in mind that this study was correlational. That is, there was no active manipulation of mindfulness. So, it is not possible to conclude causal relationships. It remains for future research to investigate whether mindfulness training could result in a lowering of the motivations for drinking and as a result lowering drinking. Regardless, it is clear that mindfulness if significantly associated with lower motivation to drink which is in turn associated with lower intake.
So, alter drinking motives with mindfulness.
“mindfulness is likely an effective tool in helping people with addiction because it’s a single, simple skill that a person can practice multiple times throughout their day, every day, regardless of the life challenges that arise.” – James Davis
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
Study Summary
Roos, C. R., Pearson, M. R., & Brown, D. B. (2015). Drinking Motives Mediate the Negative Associations between Mindfulness Facets and Alcohol Outcomes among College Students. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors : Journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, 29(1), 176–183. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0038529
Abstract
Mindfulness and drinking motives have both been linked to affect regulation, yet the relationship between mindfulness and drinking motives is poorly understood. The present study examined whether drinking motives, particularly mood regulatory motives, mediated the associations between facets of mindfulness and alcohol-related outcomes among college students (N = 297). We found three specific facets of mindfulness (describing, nonjudging of inner experience, and acting with awareness) to have negative associations with alcohol outcomes. Importantly, specific drinking motives mediated these associations such that lower levels of mindfulness were associated with drinking for distinct reasons (enhancement, coping, conformity), which in turn predicted alcohol use and/or alcohol problems. Our findings suggest that drinking motives, especially mood regulatory and negative reinforcement motives, are important to examine when studying the role of mindfulness in college student drinking behavior.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4388773/