When feeling bad meets acting fast: Within- and between-person links between negative affect, negative urgency, and alcohol-related consequences

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is, in part, diagnosed based on the experience of problems or consequences that come, either directly or indirectly, as a result of alcohol use. For young adults, consequences experienced during students’ first semester in college are prospectively associated with increased likelihood of meeting criteria for AUD, an association that strengthens over time (Prince et al., 2019). However, conceptual models of addiction tend to be relatively imprecise about how and for whom alcohol-related consequences emerge, though models of addiction tend to imply that consequences are driven by increases in alcohol use. Negative reinforcement models of addiction (e.g., (Baker et al., 2004; Koob & Le Moal, 2001) suggest that negative affect is a key factor in the transition from alcohol use to AUD. For example, the experience of withdrawal may cause an individual to experience an increase in negative affect, and, as this happens, the motivation for drinking is thought to shift toward relieving the aversive experience of negative affect that accompanies withdrawal. Due to a corresponding increase in physiological tolerance, people experiencing withdrawal-related negative affect must not only drink, according to the model, but drink more alcohol in an attempt to relieve this negative affect. This increase in alcohol use is thought to subsequently drive corresponding increases in consequences. However, research indicates that alcohol use only accounts for a minority of the variance in consequences (