Women who pre-game: A study of stress and alcohol use in female collegiate predrinkers

Abstract

Introduction: This study examined the relationship between stress and pre-gaming (i.e., drinking prior to going out to an event) in female college students. Methods: Thirty-four female college students were grouped as pre-gamers or non-pre-gamers based on self-reported drinking patterns. They completed surveys about alcohol use and mental health and provided a set of salivary cortisol samples upon waking, 30 min later, and at 10am on the same day. Results: Pre-gamers and non-pre-gamers did not differ on demographics or psychosocial variables. Pre-gamers reported riskier drinking overall and had greater endorsement of social, coping, and enhancement drinking motives. Pre-gamers also had lower cortisol levels 30 min after waking and exhibited attenuated CAR. Conclusions: Female collegiate pre-gamers may differ from their peers not only in terms of alcohol consumption and drinking motives, but also on attenuated CAR, a physiological biomarker associated with stress dysregulation and vulnerability to addictive behaviors.

Keywords:

• Alcohol
• college
• cortisol
• pre-drinking
• stress

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of United States of America and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of Texas State University.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Office of the Provost and the Department of Psychology at Texas State University. The contributions of N.C. and R.G. were supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health (Award #R15AA026076). J.P.’s contribution was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award #K01AA029473. The content of this paper does not necessarily reflect the official views of the NIAAA or NIH (https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/). A preliminary abstract of this research was published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 41(S1), 231 A.