Alcohol use represents a significant public health concern, with young adults facing the highest risk for alcohol-related harms due to their tendency to engage in high-risk consumption patterns. Among these patterns, daytime drinking—defined as alcohol consumption beginning before 4:00 P.M.—has emerged as a particularly concerning behavior. Existing research has established that daytime drinking is associated with increased total alcohol consumption, more severe alcohol-related consequences, and higher likelihood of simultaneous alcohol and cannabis use. While some studies suggest daytime drinking may serve as an early warning sign for AUD, and one investigation found increased AUDIT scores at 30-month follow-up among frequent daytime drinkers, research examining the longer-term risks of daily-level daytime drinking patterns remains limited. To address this gap, the current study examines both proximal and distal changes in hazardous drinking levels one year later among college students who engage in daytime drinking.
This study was conducted with 403 college students aged 18-25 who reported drinking 2 or more days per week, had at least one heavy episodic drinking occasion in the past 2 weeks, and reported four or more negative alcohol-related consequences in the past month. Participants completed twice-daily surveys (morning and afternoon), with items about previous day’s drinking time included only in morning surveys. Participants completed an initial 21-day burst of daily surveys following baseline, with three additional 14-day bursts conducted at 1, 6, and 12 months later. Survey items included alcohol use, daytime drinking, negative alcohol-related consequences, and hazardous drinking. Multilevel Poisson and logistic multilevel models were used to analyze within-person, daily-level, and person-level associations between daytime drinking and alcohol-related outcomes, and longitudinal associations between the proportion of daytime drinking days and changes in AUDIT scores were tested using negative binomial regressions, adjusting for relevant covariates.
According to the study findings, 70.2% of participants reported daytime drinking at least once, comprising 15.0% of all drinking days, with higher frequency among older students (p < .001). Regarding proximal outcomes, daytime drinking days were associated with 31% more alcohol consumption, 2.43 times greater odds of meeting heavy episodic drinking thresholds, 4.36 times greater odds of meeting high-intensity drinking thresholds, and a 0.19-unit increase in subjective intoxication compared to evening/nighttime-only drinking days, though these effects became non-significant when controlling for number of drinks. For distal outcomes, more frequent daytime drinking during the initial assessment periods significantly predicted residual changes in AUDIT scores between baseline and 12-month follow-up, with each 10% increase in proportional daytime drinking frequency corresponding to a 4% exponential increase in AUDIT scores, indicating that college students with more frequent daytime drinking experienced greater increases in hazardous drinking levels over one year.
Takeaway: Daytime drinking among college students is associated with higher alcohol consumption in the short term and predicts increased hazardous drinking levels one year later.