Craving, distress tolerance, emotion dysregulation, and experiential avoidance among patients in early recovery from opioid use disorder in residential programs

ABSTRACT

Objective

Craving has been identified as a major factor in substance use relapse and studied in conjunction with distress tolerance. This research aimed to investigate the mediating roles of experiential avoidance and difficulties in emotion regulation in individuals recovering from opioid use disorder in the early stages.

Methods

The research involved 241 adult males in residential treatment centers. To be eligible for inclusion, participants must have a self-reported abstinence period of at least three months at the time of data collection. The structural model showed strong fit indices (GFI = 0.913, RMSEA = 0.075, SRMR = 0.047), with low distress tolerance determining high craving. Furthermore, only experiential avoidance and not emotion dysregulation mediated this path significantly.

Conclusions

The significant mediating effect of experiential avoidance rather than emotion dysregulation could be interpreted as the study participants would not see their distress as just unpleasant feelings. This implies that craving may be viewed as a private experience comprised of thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions, and bodily sensations. Thus, focusing on experiential avoidance might be more beneficial for individuals in the early stages of recovery from opioid use disorder in a residential program.

KEYWORDS:

• Craving
• substance use
• experiential avoidance
• distress tolerance
• difficulties in emotion regulation

Acknowledgments

This research did not receive any specific grant funding from agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Contributors

Authors Noury and Fazeli designed the study. Fazeli wrote the first draft of the manuscript and analyzed the data. Hasani and Nouri contributed to the interpretation of the data and critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors have contributed to the manuscript, and all authors have approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.