Self-Control and Stress Coping Shape Substance Use Risk Among University Students

University years are often described as a period of freedom and self-discovery, but they are also a window of heightened vulnerability. Young adults living away from family supervision for the first time face academic pressure, shifting social networks, and easy access to alcohol and other substances. A new study published in Current Psychology by Ayşe Çevik of Anadolu University and Tarık Tuncay of Hacettepe University examines why some students slide toward risky alcohol and substance use while others stay resilient, and the answer turns out to hinge less on the availability of support networks than on the psychological machinery of self-control and stress coping.

The research team used an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, a strategy that pairs broad statistical mapping with in-depth follow-up interviews. In the quantitative phase, 760 undergraduate students completed validated instruments measuring risky behaviors, self-control, coping with stress, and perceived social support. The qualitative phase then zoomed in on 18 participants deliberately selected because they displayed either elevated or low risk for alcohol and substance use, allowing the researchers to hear directly from students on both sides of the divide about what drives use and what holds it back.

Statistically, the picture that emerged was strikingly consistent. Being male and being a smoker were both positively associated with an increased risk of alcohol and substance use, a pattern that echoes earlier findings linking nicotine with broader experimentation and with masculine norms around risk-taking. More interesting, however, were the protective factors. Effective stress coping skills, particularly strong self-control, were negatively related to substance use risk, meaning that students who could regulate impulses and manage emotional pressure were substantially less likely to report dangerous drinking or drug use.

Self-control has long been a central construct in criminology and personality psychology. Classic work by Tangney, Baumeister, and Boone showed that people high in self-control adjust better, achieve more, and suffer less pathology. The present findings extend that logic into the university context: a student’s capacity to delay gratification, suppress impulsive urges, and stick to long-term goals appears to function as a psychological firewall against the cascade of temptations that campus life presents. The authors also found that avoidance-oriented coping was negatively related to risk, a nuance suggesting that stepping back from stressors in certain structured ways may, in this population, accompany lower substance involvement.

Perhaps the most surprising result concerns social support. Decades of public health research have treated perceived social support as a near-universal protective factor, buffering people against stress and reducing harmful behaviors. Yet in this study the role of perceived social support remained limited in predicting the risk of alcohol and substance use. The statistical signal was weak once self-control and coping styles were accounted for. This does not mean friendships are irrelevant, but it does suggest that in higher education settings the quality of an individual’s internal regulatory resources may matter more than the warmth of the surrounding network.

The qualitative interviews added texture that numbers alone cannot capture. Students who used alcohol or substances cited five principal motivations: thrill-seeking, curiosity, belonging and socializing, avoiding or coping with stress, and dealing with withdrawal symptoms. These reasons map neatly onto established theories of addiction. Sensation-seeking and curiosity reflect approach motivations common in emerging adulthood, while stress-driven use aligns with the self-medication hypothesis, which holds that some people use substances to dampen negative emotional states. The mention of withdrawal symptoms among the motivations is particularly concerning, because it hints that for a subset of students use has already crossed from recreation into dependence.

On the protective side, the rationales for abstinence were religious conviction, perceived health concerns, and familial restrictions. Each of these operates through a different mechanism. Religious conviction supplies both a moral framework and a community that discourages use, a pattern documented in prior studies of religiosity as a protective factor among first-year university students. Health concerns reflect a rational appraisal of costs, while familial restrictions show that even after students leave home, the internalized expectations of parents continue to exert a restraining force. Together these findings suggest that prevention programs should not rely on a single lever but should engage identity, health literacy, and family ties simultaneously.

The theoretical scaffolding of the study draws on the biopsychosocial model, which treats health behaviors as products of biological, psychological, and social factors interacting over time, and on the stress and coping tradition inaugurated by Folkman and Lazarus, in which coping is understood as a dynamic process of appraisal and response rather than a fixed trait. Within that framework, substance use can be seen as one possible outcome of a coping transaction: when demands exceed resources and adaptive strategies are unavailable, chemical shortcuts become attractive. Self-control, in this reading, is not merely willpower but a resource that determines which coping strategies are even accessible under pressure.

The methodological rigor of the work deserves note. The quantitative phase was powered using G*Power calculations, the regression analyses controlled for multicollinearity, and the qualitative phase followed thematic analysis procedures described by Braun and Clarke, with reporting aligned to the COREQ checklist for interview research. Ethical approval came from the Social and Human Sciences Research and Publication Ethics Committee of Hacettepe University, and all participants gave informed consent. The combination of a large survey sample with a small, purposively selected interview group is precisely the kind of design that allows researchers to move from correlation to plausible mechanism.

The practical implications are clear and, the authors argue, urgent. Intervention strategies designed to reduce alcohol and substance use among young people in higher education should target self-control directly and foster efficient stress coping skills, rather than assuming that simply connecting students to supportive peers will suffice. Programs that train impulse regulation, teach structured coping techniques, and address the specific motivations students themselves report, from thrill-seeking to withdrawal management, are more likely to change behavior than generic awareness campaigns. As universities worldwide grapple with rising mental health demands, this study offers a deceptively simple message: the strongest shield against substance use risk may be built from the inside out.

Subject of Research: Risk factors for alcohol and substance use among university students, focusing on self-control, stress coping, and social support

Article Title: Substance use risk in higher education: the interplay of self-control, coping with stress, and social support

Article References: Çevik, A., & Tuncay, T. (2026). Substance use risk in higher education: the interplay of self-control, coping with stress, and social support. Current Psychology, 45(19), Article 1553. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10075-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10075-y

Keywords: substance use, university students, self-control, stress coping, social support, alcohol use, risk factors, mixed methods, prevention, Current Psychology, Substance, risk