Characterizing Twitter chatter about temporary alcohol abstinence during "Dry January"

Content analysis of substance use disorder recovery discourse on Twitter: From personal recovery narratives to marketing of addiction treatment

BACKGROUND

Substance use disorder (SUD) is a prodigious public health issue characterized by a substantial treatment gap. Despite challenges, millions have resolved a prior significant alcohol or drug problem, increasingly using online supports as a part of their recovery efforts (e.g., virtual mutual-help group meetings, traditional social networking sites [SNS]). However, the content surrounding SUD recovery-related discussion on SNS such as Twitter remains largely unexamined. To fill this gap, we explored public tweets using SUD recovery-related hashtags.

METHODS

From January 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022, 455,968 public tweets were collected using SUD recovery-related hashtags. Natural language processing was used to identify and remove irrelevant groupings of tweets from the dataset, resulting in a final corpus of 186,460 tweets. A random subsample of 1800 tweets was extracted for content analysis, involving codebook development, manual annotation by trained coders, and inter-rater reliability assessment (average Cohen's κ = 0.77).

RESULTS

Nearly half (41.7%) of SUD recovery-related posts were from individuals in or seeking recovery, while 21.3% originated from addiction treatment industry accounts. Common themes included addiction treatment marketing (27.4%; some of which promoted scientifically unsupported products or services), emotional support (15.6%), celebrating a recovery milestone (15.4%), alcohol/drug-related sociopolitical commentary (14.7%), expressions of gratitude (11.5%), and mutual-help group participation (8.7%).

CONCLUSIONS

SUD recovery-related content on Twitter reflected individuals seeking social support during efforts to initiate or maintain recovery. However, these accounts may be met with marketing material from entities that misrepresent their services or promote products based on unsubstantiated claims. Stricter (or enforcement of existing) regulations may be warranted to protect vulnerable SNS platform users from entities seeking to exploit them for financial gain.

Sober Curiosity and Participation in Temporary Alcohol Abstinence Challenges in a Cohort of U.S. Emerging Adults

OBJECTIVE

Thus far, behavioral health research in the United States has not explored the prevalence or correlates of sober curiosity (SC; exploratory or experimental abstinence or moderation) or temporary alcohol abstinence challenges (TAACs; e.g., "Dry January"), despite significant attention in media and popular discourse. We explored these activities in a sample of U.S. emerging adults (e.g., ages 18-29), a population with higher-risk drinking behavior yet some of the lowest rates of treatment engagement for alcohol use problems.

METHOD

Survey data were collected in 2021-2022 among participants (n = 1,659; M age = 24.7 years). We assessed SC awareness/engagement and past-year TAAC participation, and differences across demographics and behavioral characteristics.

RESULTS

Overall, 9% of emerging adults were familiar with SC and 7% had participated in a TAAC in the past year. Half of TAAC participants reported drinking less after the TAAC, and 15% remained abstinent after the TAAC ended. SC familiarity and TAAC were both associated with past-month heavy drinking, cannabis use, higher Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores, more past-year alcohol and cannabis consequences, past-year substance use treatment, and greater readiness to quit alcohol.

CONCLUSIONS

Both SC and TAACs may have potential to engage young people with a desire to moderate or eliminate their alcohol consumption. This may occur directly through use of these strategies or by helping them connect to additional services. Future research can help the field understand the uptake of SC and TAACs, gauge efficacy, and identify avenues to link young people to resources and interventions.