This is mostly an excellent description of the article as I meant to convey it. But I also believe that I’ve failed to make myself entirely clear.
Consider these particular sentences:
The logistic regression analysis indicated that beliefs about cognitive confidence and beliefs about the need to control thoughts were independent predictors of a classification as a problem drinker over and above negative emotions. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses on the combined samples showed that beliefs about cognitive confidence, and beliefs about the need to control thoughts, independently predicted both alcohol use and problem drinking scores.
Alcohol can certainly affect your emotions directly, but I’m saying that it does not look like this is primarily the reason that problems drinkers become problem drinkers. A failure to regulate one’s beliefs about one’s own beliefs is the proximate issue, and it is merely by consequence that this results in alleviation of anxiety. The idea is that the causal graph may not look like ‘Drink alcohol --> Be less anxious’; but rather more like ‘Drink alcohol --> By some currently unknown mechanism, get better at controlling thoughts --> Become less anxious’. And it may be that there is something of a feedback mechanism, such the anxiety makes one less able to control thoughts, and thus more anxious, and thus less able to control thoughts, etc.
This is mostly an excellent description of the article as I meant to convey it. But I also believe that I’ve failed to make myself entirely clear.
Consider these particular sentences:
Alcohol can certainly affect your emotions directly, but I’m saying that it does not look like this is primarily the reason that problems drinkers become problem drinkers. A failure to regulate one’s beliefs about one’s own beliefs is the proximate issue, and it is merely by consequence that this results in alleviation of anxiety. The idea is that the causal graph may not look like ‘Drink alcohol --> Be less anxious’; but rather more like ‘Drink alcohol --> By some currently unknown mechanism, get better at controlling thoughts --> Become less anxious’. And it may be that there is something of a feedback mechanism, such the anxiety makes one less able to control thoughts, and thus more anxious, and thus less able to control thoughts, etc.