Psychological Distress, Obsessive Compulsive Thoughts about Drinking, and Alcohol Consumption in Young Adult Drinkers.

Psychological distress is an important predictor of heavy drinking, especially among lower-income drinkers. The mechanisms underlying this effect have not been well characterized. One possibility is that distressed individuals are more vulnerable to obsessive and compulsive thoughts about drinking. We hypothesized that: 1) distress would predict obsessive and compulsive thoughts about alcohol, which in turn would predict drinking, and 2) effects would be particularly pronounced among lower-income drinkers. Young adults (n=105) were recruited from an urban university and completed the Brief Symptoms Index (BSI), the Obsessive-Compulsive Drinking Scale (OCDS), and a 90-day timeline follow-back (TLFB) drinking interview. Consistent with the hypotheses, drinkers with higher levels of distress (BSI) exhibited higher levels of obsessive and compulsive drinking-related thoughts, which in turn were related to drinking over the past ninety days (p's <.0001). Path analyses revealed that the BSI had a significant indirect effect on drinking outcomes through increased OCDS. Furthermore, conditional process analyses revealed that effects were particularly pronounced among drinkers with lower household incomes. Findings highlight the importance of psychological distress as a predictor of obsessive and compulsive thoughts about alcohol, as well as drinking behavior, and underscore the critical need to address psychological functioning among lower-income drinkers in particular.