Common and Uncommon Risky Drinking Patterns in Young Adulthood Uncovered by Person-Specific Computational Modeling

Objective: Alcohol use offers social benefits for young adults, but also carries risk of significant negative consequences. Better understanding of processes driving alcohol use for those who experience negative consequences can prevent these harms. These at-risk young adults likely have drinking patterns in common and patterns unique to each individual. Evidence for these processes have been limited by methods that fail to capture the complex, heterogeneous, multivariate nature of drinking. We overcome these limitations with idiographic computational models. Method: We studied a sample of 97 young adults who regularly binge drink and experience negative drinking consequences. Participants completed daily surveys for 120 days. We estimated temporal networks of each person’s drinking patterns by searching all possible dynamic relations among self-reported alcohol consumption and various cognitive, motivational, and emotional constructs. This method allowed us to identify common and uncommon drinking processes in a data-driven manner. Results: We found clear patterns of drinking characteristic of this population (i.e., shared by 60%–100% of the sample) in which young adults drink more per occasion, when they expect positive outcomes and are motivated to get drunk and enhance social experiences, which leads to positive and negative consequences. We also identified subsets of participants with uncommon (i.e., shared by <51% of the sample) drinking patterns. Conclusions: Most young adults may continue to drink despite experiencing negative drinking consequences, because it also satisfies their desire for fun and social connection. Additionally, subsets of young adults have relatively uncommon drinking patterns that may reflect risk or resilience factors.