Moderating effects of stress coping: evaluating the relationships between personality and prescription drug misuse amongst Young adults

ABSTRACT

Background

Young individuals (18 to 25 years old) misuse prescription drugs at the highest rates. College or university audience may come with added risk. Previous studies indicate that personality plays a significant role in the prediction of much addictive behavior.

Method

Four characteristics of anxiety symptoms, hopelessness, sensation seeking, and impulsivity have continuously been linked. The major focus on overall prescription drug use, inconsistent operationalization of misuse, and failure to account for alcohol use restrict published studies on personality as a predictor of prescription drug misuse. Small and general sample sizes were used.

Result

We wanted to know more about how personality influenced total use, use that was approved by a doctor, and misuse of prescription sedatives/tranquilizers, opioids, and stimulants. Young adults in Karachi, Pakistan were included in the large (N = 1755) sample (mean age = 18.6 years; 68.9% female). We hypothesized that sedatives/tranquilizers would be associated to anxiety sensitivity, opioids to hopelessness, stimulants to sensation seeking, and impulsivity to all three. Except for the impulsivity to opioid use pathway, our “any use” model’s predictions were entirely supported. Sensation seeking predicted stimulants for misuse, anxiety sensitivity (marginally) predicted sedatives/tranquilizers, and impulsivity predicted all three.

Conclusion

Our models advocate for the use of interventions that are tailored to each young adults’ personality. Targeting anxiety sensitivity for sedative/tranquilizer misuse, sensation seeking for stimulant misuse and impulsivity for unrestrained prescription drug misuse are specifically suggested by the studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Drugs
• prescription drugs
• sedatives
• tranquilizers
• Young adults

Disclosure statement

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

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14659891.2023.2183908

Additional information

Funding

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