Relation of personality to adolescent alcohol and drug use: a coping perspective.

A link between personality and substance use is established by assuming that (a) substance use which occurs in response to problem situations represents a present-oriented, emotion-focused coping behavior, and (b) adolescents who lack ego strength and ego control are more likely to rely on emotion-focused coping behaviors. Longitudinal data used to test the validity of these assumptions indicate that above-average levels of use intensity and of coping use are exhibited by adolescents who either maintain below-average levels of ego strength and ego control or who fall from average to below-average levels over a 3-year interval.