Alcohol craving in relation to coping with stress and satisfaction with life in the addicted

BACKGROUND The present study aimed at finding any relation between alcohol craving and strategies of coping with stress and satisfaction with life in the addicted. Until now, studies have shown that generalized deficits in coping with stress, and the dominance of avoidance strategies, are significantly related to the increase of the risk of addiction and the course of this disease. This relation, which could link strategies of coping with stress and quality of life with experiencing alcohol craving, has only been explained to a small extent. Also, the role of gender in explaining these relations is ambiguous. PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE The study was conducted in a group of 550 addicted subjects in out-patient or in-patient treatment (396 men and 114 women). In the present study the following instruments were used: the Craving Typology Questionnaire by Marinotti et al., the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale by Modell et al., the Mini-Cope by Carver et al., SADD by Reistrick et al., and the Satisfaction with Life Scale by Diener et al. Statistical correlational analysis and structural equations were applied, namely partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM). RESULTS There are two types of links between craving and strategies of coping with stress among the addicted. The first dominating type is pointing at casual link between ineffective strategies of coping with stress and craving. The other weaker type indicates the diminishing influence of effective strategies of coping with stress on alcohol craving. Life satisfaction lowers alcohol craving. CONCLUSIONS Effective strategies of reacting to stress, together with life satisfaction, protect against increase of alcohol craving. Severity of dependence is an important factor which moderates the influence of strategies of coping with stress on alcohol craving.