Substance Use as Coping: Why the Reason Matters
The reassurance people give themselves is about quantity. The research on why people use suggests the reason is a separate question with its own answer.
Almost everyone who has wondered about their drinking or cannabis use runs the same check: how much, how often, compared with other people. It is reasonable, and it is not the only question.
A long line of research has asked instead what the use is for, and the answers behave differently from each other in ways the quantity question cannot see. The work below covers alcohol, where the evidence is strongest, and cannabis, where the same framework has been applied with a different result.
Four Reasons, Not One
A 1994 study using a representative household sample of 1,243 adolescents tested a four-factor model of drinking motives and found it fitted the data well, with the same four-factor pattern holding across gender, race and age.
The four are social, enhancement, conformity and coping motives, the last meaning drinking to relieve or escape an unpleasant internal state. The measure was developed in adolescents, and later revisions have been used widely with adults.
Filing these separately turns out to matter, because they do not lead to the same place.
Two Routes to the Same Problems
A meta-analysis using structural equation modelling across 229 studies, comprising 254 samples and 130,705 participants, examined how each motive related to drinking outcomes, separating the effect that runs through how much someone drinks from any effect that does not.
Coping motives showed a relatively stronger direct association with alcohol problems, and a relatively weaker indirect association running through consumption. Enhancement motives showed the opposite pattern: no statistically significant direct association with problems, and a relatively stronger indirect one via how much was consumed.
That is the finding worth carrying out of this article. Quantity is not the only useful question: across the studies, coping motives retained an association with alcohol problems that was not explained mainly by consumption in the model. That does not establish what the motive means for any individual drinker.
The limits are real. Most of the evidence was cross-sectional, with only five samples providing longitudinal data, so causal direction and temporal order are not established: distress may drive both the motive and the problems. Motives are self-reported, and people are not always well placed to know their own reasons. What the analysis describes is a pattern across a very large body of studies, not a mechanism demonstrated in individuals.
Cannabis, and Why It Is Not the Same Result
The same framework was adapted for cannabis. A five-factor measure distinguishes enhancement, social, coping, conformity and expansion motives, the last meaning use to broaden awareness or understanding.
A meta-analysis by the same authors combined 48 studies and 11,274 participants. At the zero-order level, all five motives were positively associated with cannabis problems, and all except conformity were associated with use frequency.
After overlap among the motives was adjusted for, the picture narrowed. Only coping and conformity retained positive associations with problems. Coping, enhancement and expansion retained positive associations with frequency, while conformity was negatively associated with frequency.
That is not the same pattern as alcohol, and it does not make the motive uninformative. Coping was the strongest unique correlate of cannabis problems, with conformity retaining a smaller association.
The framework travels between substances; the exact pattern of findings does not automatically travel with it. Anyone assuming the drinking-to-cope result applies unchanged to other drugs is extending further than the evidence goes.
What Do You Reach For When Something Goes Wrong?
Substance use is not one of the sixteen responses set out in the full guide to coping mechanisms and measured by the test below, and the test is not a screening tool for anything. The responses it does measure that sit closest are the avoidant ones, which move away from a difficulty rather than at it.
Each situation offers four responses, one that acts on the problem, one that works on the feeling, one that moves away from it, and one that stays with the distress, and asks which you would reach for first.
The full version runs that choice across 28 situations and returns a profile across four coping families. It reports which responses you selected, not whether they were the right ones.
Take the Full Coping Mechanism Test →
Because it reports a preference rather than a score, nothing in it can be right or wrong. No cognitive test on this site is relevant to substance use, and none should be used to assess it. If you want something scored on an unrelated ability you can see what is measured elsewhere, or read further in the guides across mind and behaviour. The homepage collects the free brain training games and cognitive tests.
A Different Question to Ask Yourself
If the reason is a variable in its own right, then the useful self-check is about function rather than volume.
Notice what comes immediately before. A drink after a good day and a drink after a specific unbearable feeling are the same drink and not the same event, and the same holds for anything else you use. The pattern to watch is whether a particular state reliably precedes it.
Ask what would happen if it were unavailable tonight. Mild disappointment is one answer. Genuine difficulty imagining getting through the evening is a different one, and worth taking seriously rather than arguing with.
Check what it is replacing. Coping motives describe a response to an internal state, which means something is being handled. Working out what that is can add useful information alongside looking honestly at how much and how often you use, and it is also something a clinician may ask about.
Do not use the quantity comparison as an all-clear. That is the check this evidence complicates, at least for alcohol. Using less than the people around you says little about the route described above.
Look at what else has thinned out. Sleep may be one of the areas affected, and the other responses in the anxiety repertoire tend to fall away as one reliable option takes their place.
An important safety point about alcohol. If you drink heavily and regularly, do not stop abruptly on your own. Alcohol withdrawal can be medically dangerous, and reducing safely is something to plan with a doctor. Some other substances also carry withdrawal risks, so stopping is worth discussing rather than attempting unaided. That is a practical warning rather than a reason to delay asking for help.
What This Page Is Not
This is not an assessment, and nothing here can tell you whether you have a problem. That is what a doctor or a specialist service is for, and it is a conversation people routinely put off for years on the grounds that things are not bad enough yet.
It is also not a moral argument. The research above treats using to cope as a response to something, which is how the rest of this section treats suppression, avoidance and the other patterns that work in the short run. Substances get a separate page because they can add direct physical, dependence-related and psychological risks to the coping pattern itself.
Where substance use has grown up around a trauma response or persistent low mood, both belong in the same conversation with the same professional, and coping mechanisms for trauma and coping skills for depression cover why addressing only one can leave an important part of the problem untouched.
What the evidence supports is narrow and useful. Motives for use can be measured and separated into distinct categories. In the alcohol model, coping motives retained an association with problems that was not explained mainly by how much people drank. In the cannabis analysis, all five motives correlated with problems before overlap was adjusted, but only coping and conformity retained unique positive associations. Neither is an individual assessment, and both are reasons to ask why as well as how much.
If you are worried about your drinking or drug use, or someone else's, please speak to your doctor or a local service. If you are in crisis, contact a crisis line in your country now.
Try the Defense Mechanism Recognition Test →
To set this beside every other response people use under pressure, see the complete list of coping mechanisms and coping skills, or read about how relief now becomes cost later.