Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, Vol 33(1), Feb 2025, 27-33; doi:10.1037/pha0000752
Prior research supported a behavioral choice analysis of the role of life events in posttreatment drinking among abstinence-seeking inpatients with alcohol use disorder (AUD). This study investigated the generality of those relationships among persons attempting “natural” recovery involving moderation drinking. We had two hypotheses: (1) The likelihood of drinking after an event would be related to the degree of alcohol-related disruption in the life–health area of the event. (2) Event-related drinking episodes would be quantitatively greater than event-unrelated episodes. Participants (N = 83) were from a larger integrated data set of prospective natural recovery studies of persons with AUD who had stopped heavy drinking and had 6-month follow-up reports of drinking and events; abstainers were excluded. Alcohol-related disruption before resolution was assessed in four domains (relationships, vocational/financial, living arrangements/legal, physical health). As predicted, postresolution event-related drinking was positively correlated with preresolution vocational/financial disruption (p p = .06). Event-related drinking episodes involved heavier drinking than event-unrelated episodes (p