The language used to describe alcoholism may give insight into drinking habits

People have used a variety of words to describe the boiling effect of alcohol, from the “butt” in the 1920s to the “horn” in the 1950s. Now, a new Pennsylvania study suggests that the language used to describe the effects young people feel from drinking can provide insight into their drinking habits.

A team of researchers led by Ashley Lindenker Michael, an associate professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Center for Prevention Studies, investigated the languages ​​that young adults use to describe various levels of inflammation.

Not only did the team discover the language used by the youth, but it also found four different classes of drinkers: happy drinkers, relaxed drinkers, buzzed drinkers, and multi-experienced drinkers.

Linden Carmichael Says Results-Recently Published in Journal Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology -Not only to understand the drinking habits of young adults, but also to help researchers and clinicians fine-tune their language during interventions and studies.

It turns out that young adults have a broad vocabulary about drinking. You need to make sure that you are using the words they are using instead of more clinical terms such as “drunk.” Even the word “drinking” may not be considered the highest level of drinking. As researchers or clinicians, we need to incorporate modern languages ​​into our work. “

Ashley Lindenker Michael, Associate Professor, Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center

According to the researchers, the age range of young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 is at high risk for dangerous alcohol use, with approximately 37% of young people reporting overdose-more than 4 men or women- At least once in the past month, 10% have reported more than 5 days of extreme drinking in the past month.

Linden Carmichael understands that young people’s drinking habits are important to intervention efforts, and some recent studies have shown how drunk someone is actually drunk, like blood. He said that it might be a better predictor of dangerous behavior than an objective measure of alcohol content (BAC).

“If young adults are at particularly high risk and are considering driving home after an overnight drink, will they calculate how many drinks they have had in a given amount of time, or ask themselves? Do they feel?” Lindenker Michael said.

“The feeling that someone is drunk is subjective, but understanding how to measure it helps prevent dangerous behavior.”

For the study, the researchers recruited 323 young adults who reported at least two heavy drinking episodes last month.

Participants completed a 10-minute questionnaire, during which they provided commonly used words to describe their feelings of drinking. They also answered questions about their typical drinking habits.

“I wanted to properly express the language used throughout the United States,” said Linden Carmichael. “Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a crowdsourcing platform, we approached young people across the country to generate words that describe light, moderate, and heavy drinking episodes.”

After analyzing the data, researchers found that most of the participants fell into four categories, each with its own vocabulary and habits.

The largest group is “Happy Drinker”, which accounts for 31% of the participants and reported feeling happy mainly when drinking alcohol. The next group reported that they were “relaxed drinkers” at 24%, happy, relaxed, and noisy.

“Disgusting drinkers” accounted for 18% of the participants and reported that they felt snarling and dizzy. Relaxed drinkers tended to report higher alcohol usage, and noisy drinkers tended to report less frequent use.

“Finally, there was a group called the “multi-experienced drinker class” that made up 27% of the participants,” Lindenker Michael said.

“They were also the only group to report tingling, tipsy and drunken feelings, and “wasting” as a general term to describe feelings of drinking. Therefore, this group may be the one most likely to drink for the purpose of drinking.”

Linden-Carmichael found that studying these language differences helps give insights to people’s motives for drinking, and how those motives are about how much someone is drinking, and how often. Added that it may give further clues to.

Linden Carmichael said, “If interventionists work with young people who are struggling to reduce their drinking, they may benefit from using the same language that participants use. There is a nature.”

“For example, the word “addiction” is not commonly used and may be associated with getting up in a hospital because of alcoholism. As such, it can be beneficial to be sensitive to how people use different words. “