Trauma Exposure Changes Substance Use Expectancies and Affects Subsequent Use among Early Adolescents

We examined changes in substance use (SU) expectancies following potentially traumatic events (PTEs) in a community-based cohort of early adolescents for three common substances used by teens (alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine) how those changes affected SU itself. We leveraged data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N=11,868, 48% female, 52% White), containing annual assessments of PTEs, SU expectancies, and SU itself from ages 10 to 14 years old. Using multilevel models to estimate between- and within-person effects, we tested whether PTEs predict negative and positive expectancies for alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine concurrently and prospectively and whether those expectancies forecast subsequent use. At the between-person level, PTEs were associated with increased negative and positive SU expectancies and subsequently associated with greater SU, directly and indirectly via positive expectancies concurrently and prospectively. At the within-person level, PTEs were associated with increased negative and positive SU expectancies concurrently but not prospectively. PTEs were associated with increases in SU directly and indirectly via positive expectancies and decreases in cannabis and nicotine use only via negative expectancies. But prospectively, PTEs were only associated with greater SU directly and not indirectly via positive or negative expectancies. Closer in time to each other, PTEs heighten the saliency of both positive and negative expectancies; however, over time, the effect of PTEs on expectancies seems to diminish. Current findings highlight a temporal window for optimal intervention to prevent SU following PTEs by assessing and targeting SU expectancies.