New research provides insight into the underlying psychological factors related to depressive symptoms during alcohol hangovers. The findings, which appear in the journal Addictive Behaviors, indicate that both emotion dysregulation and repetitive negative thinking play a key role.
An alcohol hangover is a collection of unpleasant physical and mental symptoms that can occur after drinking too much alcohol. Approximately 22% of drinkers report experiencing anxiety or depression during an alcohol hangover. But little is known about these psychological symptoms.
“I became interested in this topic while backpacking through Europe on a gap year in 2017. When talking to various people in a hostel the morning after a bar crawl, the topic of mood symptoms coinciding with hangover came up repeatedly,” explained study author Kristin Tellez-Monnery of the University of Nevada at Reno.
“I immediately wondered why mood symptoms might co-occur with hangover but could not find much information available on the internet at the time. I was then inspired to pursue a master’s project to help explore and increase information on hangover mood symptoms and their possible causes.”
The study involved undergraduate students from a large public university who completed online surveys through Qualtrics. Participants were selected if they reported drinking alcohol. They completed surveys on their mental health and emotion regulation at the start of the study and completed a follow-up survey after two weeks on their experience of hangover and repetitive negative thinking. Out of 136 participants, 39 reported experiencing a hangover during the follow-up survey.
The researchers found that anxiety symptoms at baseline were associated with subsequent hangover anxiety symptoms. But neither emotion dysregulation nor repetitive negative thinking were associated with hangover anxiety symptoms when the effects of non-hangover anxiety were accounted for.
“I was surprised that we didn’t find any stronger relationships with either of the predictors and hangover anxiety,” Tellez-Monnery told PsyPost. “I was especially surprised because repetitive negative thinking encompasses the concept of worry, which is generally highly associated with anxiety symptoms.”
“Additionally, previous research has found emotion regulation to be an in-between factor between alcohol abuse and anxiety and to precede the development of anxiety disorders. Therefore I found it surprising that its effect in this was not greater than that of anxiety symptoms measured at baseline (prior to hangover).”
When it came to hangover depression, on the other hand, repetitive negative thinking did emerge as a significant predictor. The findings indicate that “individuals are more prone to depressive symptoms during hangover if they get mentally stuck in thoughts that they believe are negative and unproductive,” Tellez-Monnery explained.
The researchers found that emotion dysregulation was associated with more severe hangover depression symptoms only at moderate to high levels of repetitive negative thinking. In other words, when someone has trouble controlling their emotions and also thinks a lot about negative things repeatedly, they are more likely to experience worse symptoms of depression after drinking alcohol. However, this seems to only happen when their repetitive negative thinking is above average.
“Not being aware or accepting of emotions and having difficulty controlling behavior when experiencing negative emotions (emotion dysregulation) in combination with the repetitive negative thoughts can make hangover depression symptoms more severe,” Tellez-Monnery told PsyPost.
But the study, like all research, includes some caveats.
“One of the caveats of my project is the smaller sample size that was analyzed,” Tellez-Monnery explained. “My sample size was mainly reduced by two phenomena- the first is that some participants who complete a baseline assessment never completed the follow-up assessment. The second is the need for participants to experience a hangover during follow-up (otherwise they could not possibly exhibit hangover mood symptoms). These two phenomena combined meant that a lot of people who completed baseline and even follow-up assessments could not be included in the analysis.”
“Although hangover depression and anxiety symptoms may only be a small part of total (all-cause) depression and anxiety symptoms, they may also benefit from therapy or coping skills training,” Tellez-Monnery added. “The psychological factors examined in this study are underlying factors to many psychological difficulties, not just hangover mood symptoms. By addressing these factors using therapy or coping skills training, someone could not only help to reduce or get rid of hangover mood symptoms but also improve their mental health generally.”
The study, “Investigating the effects of emotion dysregulation and repetitive negative thinking on alcohol hangover anxiety and depression“, was authored by Kristin Tellez-Monnery, Christopher R. Berghoff, and Michael J. McDermott.