Autobiographical reasoning: a process involved in the clinical evolution of individuals with alcohol use disorder?

Background: Among the several processes involved in Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) relapse, a little-explored process concerns the way individuals with AUD reflect about their own life experiences andthe links they develop between their personal past and their sense of identity. This process, known as autobiographical reasoning, participates in the integration of personal past experiences (i.e., autobiographical memories) in a long-term self-knowledge structure and contributes to the development and evolution of a sense of personal identity and self-continuity in one’s life. The present study aimed 1) to characterize two forms of autobiographical reasoning in AUD participants’ autobiographical memories, meaning making and self-event connections, and 2) to examine their implication in the clinical evolution of individuals with AUD at 6 and 12 months. In this sense, the construction of identity through a specific form of autobiographical reasoning could constitute a key factor in maintaining problematic consumption behaviours.Methods: 58 participants with AUD and 54 control participants were invited to perform an autobiographical memory task visiting 4 life periods (childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, adulthood, last year period), and to recall 2 important memories per period. Both groups were re-contacted 6 and 12 months later to assess anxious and depressive symptoms and alcohol consumption severity. We also evaluated care adherence and craving intensity for AUD participants. Memories were coded according to the sophistication of meaning making and the self-event connections. Meaning making corresponds to meaning elaboration from autobiographical memories to precise what was learned or understood from the past event. Self-event connections refer to an explicit link between past event and self-conception established in autobiographical memories’ narration.Results: Preliminary results suggest a less sophisticated meaning in AUD individuals’ autobiographical memories, thus they may have more difficulty making sense of their experiences, and would be less likely to draw meaning that applied to broader life domains (i.e., insights). Moreover, participants with AUD reported more negative and less positive self-event connections (i.e., the AUD participants would derive more negative meaning and less positive meaning from their memories for their self-conception or world understanding). They also developed as many self-event connections about a stable aspect of the self or about a change of the self as the control participants. We support that those autobiographical reasoning features would have predictable effects on the alcohol consumption severity, craving, care adherence and anxious and depressive symptoms at 6 and 12 months (longitudinal results will be presented).Conclusions: Those autobiographical reasoning features in individuals with AUD may participate in the maintenance of maladaptive behavioural and emotional scripts involved in the drinking and relapse processes.