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Introduction–The analyses (1) assessed the association between social status variables and aggression when controlling for volume of alcohol consumption and episodic heavy drinking (EHD), (2) tested whether social status moderates the association between volume or EHD and verbal as well as physical aggression, and (3) investigated whether EHD moderates the effect of volume on aggression.MethodsSwedish Alcohol Monitoring Survey (2003 to 2011); N=104,316 current drinkers; response rate: 51 to 38%. Alcohol-related aggression was defined as involvement in a quarrel or physical fight while drinking. Social status was defined as the highest education, monthly income and marital status.ResultsThe associations between social status variables and aggression showed mixed results. Verbal aggression was associated with education in males and with marital status in both genders. Physical aggression was associated with education in both genders. No associations with aggression were found for income. With few exceptions, these associations remained significant when controlling for drinking patterns; social status did not moderate the association between drinking and aggression; EHD moderated the effect of volume on physical aggression in males.ConclusionsGroups of lower educated and non-married individuals experience verbal or physical aggression over and above different levels of consumption. Individual differences in aggression vulnerability rather than differences in aggression predisposition account for higher risks of aggression in these groups.

Aim This article explores the multiplicity of former heavy drinkers' narratives. The focus lies on turning points from heavy drinking among people who have recovered through self-change and among those who recovered by participating in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings. Design We conducted 42 qualitative interviews with media-recruited informants in 2009–2013. The interviews allowed the respondents to narrate their life histories of drinking and quitting drinking, including accounts of causality and order of events. Results These narratives are enactments shaped in the practice and context in which they were experienced. It is argued that the multiplicity of drinking narratives results not only from the fact that people have different experiences while drinking nor only from different people having different ways of recovering from a problematic consumption. The multiplicity is also the result of the very enactment of recovering and the lives lived after the recovery. The multiplicity is created in practice and is revealed in the narratives. Conclusions The narratives and the enactment of the narratives of one's past, present and future that occur when making momentous changes in one's life – such as stopping drinking – are all essential for the process of quitting alcohol and the life to be lived hereafter. We should therefore pay more attention to the multiplicity that is created in the enactment of narratives in the process of recovery.

Aims The aim of the current study was to test empirically two predictions from Skog's theory of collectivity of drinking behavior, using time series data from Norwegian adolescents. The two specific predictions were: 1) A change in mean alcohol consumption is positively associated with a change in the proportion of heavy drinkers, and 2) A change in mean alcohol consumption is positively associated with a change at all consumption levels. Data & Methods The present analyses are based on ESPAD data collected from Norwegian adolescents (15-16 years) in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011. The relationship between mean consumption and the proportion of heavy drinkers was analyzed by regressing the proportions of heavy drinkers at each time point on the consumption means at each time point. In order to assess whether adolescents at all consumption levels, from light to heavy drinkers, changed collectively as mean consumption changed, we regressed log-transformed consumption means on the log-transformed percentile values (P25, P50, P75, P90 and P95). The analysis was restricted to adolescents who had consumed alcohol in the last 30 days (total n = 7554). Results The results showed a strong relationship between mean alcohol consumption and the proportion of heavy drinkers. An increase in mean consumption was also associated with an increase at all consumption levels, from light to heavy drinkers. Conclusion The results of the current study are in line with the theory of collectivity of drinking behavior. The findings of this study suggest that by reducing the total consumption of alcohol among adolescents, consumption and risk of harm may be reduced in all consumer groups.