Emotion differentiation in early recovery from alcohol use disorder: Associations with in‐the‐moment affect and 3‐month drinking outcomes

BACKGROUND: Early recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD) is commonly associated with high levels of negative affect, stress, and emotional vulnerability, which confer significant relapse risk. Emotion differentiation—the ability to distinguish between discrete emotions—has been shown to predict relapse after treatment for a drug use disorder, but this relationship has not been explored in individuals recovering from AUD. METHODS: The current study used thrice daily random and up to thrice daily self‐initiated ecological momentary assessment surveys (N = 42, observations = 915) to examine whether 1) moments of high affective arousal are characterized by momentary differences in emotion differentiation among individuals in the first year of a current AUD recovery attempt, and 2) individuals’ average emotion differentiation would predict subsequent alcohol use measured by the timeline follow‐back over a 3‐month follow‐up period. RESULTS: Multilevel models showed that moments (Level 1) of higher‐than‐average negative affect (p < 0.001) and/or stress (p = 0.033) were characterized by less negative emotion differentiation, while moments of higher‐than‐average positive affect were characterized by greater positive emotion differentiation (p < 0.001). At the between‐person level (Level 2), participants with higher stress overall had lower negative emotion differentiation (p = 0.009). Linear regression showed that average negative, but not positive, emotion differentiation was inversely associated with percent drinking days over the subsequent 3‐month follow‐up period (p = 0.042). Neither form of average emotion differentiation was associated with drinking quantity. CONCLUSIONS: We found that for individuals in early AUD recovery, affective states are associated with acute shifts in the capacity for emotion differentiation. Further, we found that average negative emotion differentiation prospectively predicts subsequent alcohol use.