Effects of Personally Relevant Stressful Experiences on Alcohol and Cannabis Use

Alcohol and cannabis are the most misused psychoactive substances in the United States, particularly among young adults (aged 18 to 30 years). Personally relevant stressful experiences are potentially key social determinants of drug use, and a substantial body of research has shown the deleterious impact of negative interpersonal encounters on young adults. Studies have also linked these stressful experiences to alcohol and cannabis use and their co-use, but this link is almost exclusively based on findings from correlational studies that use retrospective reports of interpersonal experiences. There is a lack of knowledge on the effects of indirect (i.e., vicarious) exposures to these negative interpersonal exchanges—daily burden that is more commonly experienced than direct interpersonal exchanges. There also have been a few experimental studies examining these personally relevant stressful experiences’ effects on drug use; such research is necessary to help establish a causal link between these stressful experiences and substance use. Establishing this causal link with a rigorous design and scientifically valid measurements will incrementally advance addiction research. The main objective of the proposed research is to examine the effects of personally relevant stressful situations on alcohol and cannabis use and co-use. Other objectives are to evaluate the indirect pathways explaining this link by way of acute stress, rumination, and coping motives, and to evaluate the buffering role of resilience factors. We propose a novel between-group experiment that uses virtual reality to subject research participants (N = 456, 18-30 years) to different stressful situations. Using validated, semi-structured scripts in experimental simulations, virtual reality has the unique advantages of immersing research participants in realistic environments and personally relevant interpersonal exchanges to promote ecological and internal validity of the findings. We will assess participants’ acute stress and coping motives to use alcohol or cannabis, or both, in real time, and assess their anger rumination and alcohol and cannabis use and co-use status 24 and 48 hours following the lab procedures. This application aligns closely with NIDA’s funding priority on polysubstance use.