Tolerance for specific negative affective states and coping-oriented cannabis use motives among college student cannabis users

Abstract

Objective

The current study examined the unique predictive ability of tolerance of specific negative affective states in relation to frequency of past-month cannabis use and coping-oriented cannabis use motives. Participants: 416 undergraduates who reported past 30 day cannabis use (65.1% female; M_age = 19.46, SD = 2.56). Methods: Participants completed self-report questionnaires for course credit. Results: After accounting for the effects of sex, negative affectivity, and tolerance of other specific negative affective states, lower levels of tolerance for sadness, but not any other negative affective states, significantly predicted more frequent cannabis use in the past 30 days (1.1% unique variance) and coping motives (1.1% unique variance). Conclusions: These findings suggest that cannabis users who have difficulty withstanding sad mood states use cannabis more frequently and are motivated to use cannabis to cope with this specific mood state and not necessarily negative affective states more broadly.

Keywords:

• Mental health
• other drugs

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of the United States and received approval from the Institutional Review Board of the University of Cincinnati.

Additional information

Funding

Access to REDCap for data collection was supported by a Center for Clinical and Translational Science and Training Grant (UL-RR026314) awarded to the University of Cincinnati.