Social anxiety and coping motives for cannabis use: The impact of experiential avoidance.

Social anxiety is robustly associated with cannabis-related problems. This relation appears to be largely explained by coping-oriented motives for cannabis use. Yet, factors associated with coping motives among socially anxious individuals have yet to be identified. The current study tested whether experiential avoidance (i.e., unwillingness to experience distressing internal states) and its subfacets mediated the relation between social anxiety and coping motives for cannabis use. The sample consisted of current (past-month) cannabis-using adults (n = 103). Results indicated that social anxiety was robustly related to experiential avoidance, which was robustly related to coping motives. Follow-up analyses indicated that behavioral avoidance was the only experiential avoidance subtype to be related to both social anxiety and coping motives after controlling for theoretically relevant variables. Experiential avoidance (globally) and behavioral avoidance (specifically) mediated the relation between social anxiety and coping motives. Together, the results suggest experiential avoidance (especially behavioral avoidance) may play an important role in cannabis use behaviors, particularly among socially anxious users.