Recent reports from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported that 18.8 million individuals of college age, use alcohol, 11.8 million use cannabis, and many use both substances simultaneously. Throughout the years there has been a rise in the number of people using both alcohol and cannabis simultaneously. There have been theories that the simultaneous use of these substances can be linked to difficulties in emotion regulation. This article describes emotional regulation as the “awareness, identification, understanding, and acceptance of emotions, the ability to control impulsive behaviors and behave in accordance with desired goals.” This study examines the differences in levels of emotion dysregulation between students that abstain from substance use, those that only drink alcohol, and those who use both alcohol and cannabis.
This study consisted of 468 students from a large public university located in Southern United States. The students completed a 36-item self-report survey that assessed emotion dysregulation. Students were also asked several questions to identify if they fell into the abstainer group, alcohol use-only group, or alcohol and cannabis use group. 16.45% of the group reported using both substances within the past month, 22.22% reported only use of alcohol in the past month, and 61.32% reported to have abstained in the past month.
Results suggested that those who use both alcohol and cannabis show much greater emotion dysregulation than those who use only alcohol and those that abstains. Simultaneous users also showed greater impulse control difficulties, non-acceptance of emotional responses, and limited access to emotion regulation strategies than the two other groups. More research is still needed to understand the mechanism that connects emotion dysregulation and the simultaneous use of substances. Once this is understood it could help in developing prevention and intervention techniques. The next step is to examine if, with an increase in access to emotion regulation techniques, will there be decrease in the simultaneous use of alcohol and cannabis.
Takeaway: Individuals that use both alcohol and cannabis are likely to experience emotion dysregulation and greater impulse control difficulties than those that only use alcohol and those that abstain from both alcohol and cannabis use.