Is Your Attachment Style Causing You to Drink Too Much?

Each of the four attachment styles has their own relationship with alcohol. Knowing the connections and patterns of your attachment style can help you make healthier choices so that alcohol use doesn’t become problematic.

What You’ll Learn:

• What attachment style means and the four common attachment styles.

• Why people with disorganized (fearful avoidant) attachment are more likely to drink excessively and have partners that are alcoholic.

• How avoidant attachment impacts drinking behaviors.

• Data on how anxious attachment style influences alcohol use.

• Research on alcohol use among people with secure attachment.

• The truth about changing attachment style and related alcohol behaviors.

Attachment theory holds that the bonds we form early in life shape how we handle closeness, conflict and emotional pain as adults. Researchers have begun asking whether those patterns also shape behaviors related to alcohol use. The short answer is that there's a real connection, and it can put a strain on relationships.

Knowing your attachment style can be the first step toward changing your relationship with alcohol so it’s healthier.

What is an Attachment Style?

Attachment styles describe how we tend to behave in close relationships. Researchers usually place them along two dimensions:

Anxiety (worry about being rejected or abandoned)

Avoidance (discomfort with closeness and dependence)

The four common attachment styles are:

• Secure: Low anxiety, low avoidance

• Anxious (preoccupied): High anxiety, low avoidance

• Avoidant (dismissive): Low anxiety, high avoidance

• Disorganized (fearful avoidant): High anxiety and high avoidance

The research is correlational. It shows that certain attachment patterns and drinking patterns tend to show up together. It doesn't prove that one causes the other, or that it is fixed. In reality, your attachment style can adjust as can your drinking.

Alcohol Use With Anxious Attachment

Of the four styles, anxious attachment has the strongest research link to alcohol problems, particularly problems tied to relationships. This isn’t too surprising since there’s a known connection between heightened anxiety and chronic drinking.

In a study by Levitt and Leonard, researchers followed 470 married couples over the first nine years of marriage. People higher in attachment anxiety were more likely to say they drank to cope with a relationship problem. That drinking-to-cope explained two outcomes:

• Drinking apart from their partner. Anxious individuals drank alone more often, which fits a familiar pattern: seeking reassurance, feeling unheard, then withdrawing.

• More alcohol-related problems in the marriage, such as conflict and a partner's concern about the drinking.

These effects held even after the researchers accounted for how much people drank. In other words, the reason someone drinks appears to matter, not just the quantity. Drinking to soothe relationship distress tends to backfire, and it can feed the insecurity that drove it in the first place.

There's a wrinkle, however. Anxious individuals also drank more often with their partners. The researchers suggest they may see shared drinking as a way to feel closer. So for someone with anxious attachment, alcohol can play two roles: a bonding ritual when things feel connected and a way to cope alone when they don't. This increases the need for reducing alcohol use so it’s not a requirement for feeling regulated and connected.

The study also found that a partner's anxiety was linked to more marital alcohol problems, which shows these patterns affect both people in a relationship.

Avoidant Attachment and Alcohol Use

Avoidant attachment is harder to pin down, and the research is less consistent. The study by Levitt and Leonard anticipated that avoidant individuals would drink apart from their partners to manage stress independently. In their sample of married couples, though, avoidance wasn't significantly linked to drinking to cope with relationship or marital alcohol problems.

Researchers note that earlier studies are mixed. However, the picture looks different in treatment settings. In the Wyrzykowska study, people with alcohol dependence scored significantly higher on avoidant attachment than those without it. The authors describe a pattern of mistrust and a tendency to avoid closeness and intimacy as mitigating factors.

Taken together, avoidance may not be a strong driver of everyday relationship-related drinking. It may still be common among people whose drinking has become severe, possibly because pulling away from others and handling emotions alone leaves alcohol as a private coping tool.

Alcohol Use and Disorganized (Fearful Avoidant) Attachment

Disorganized attachment combines the fear of abandonment seen in anxious attachment with the discomfort with closeness seen in avoidant attachment. People with this style often want connection and fear it at the same time, which can create a significant amount of distress.

This is the least studied style in alcohol research because some of the most in-depth studies didn’t examine it as a separate attachment category. Instead they measured anxiety and avoidance as separate dimensions.

What we can reasonably say is that both dimensions define this disorganized attachment style (high anxiety and high avoidance). Higher levels of both anxiety and avoidance show up in people with alcohol dependence.That suggests people with a fearful-avoidant pattern may be carrying both risk factors, and that alcohol could become a way to manage the push and pull of wanting closeness and fearing it.

Interestingly, there is some evidence that suggests people with disorganized attachment are more likely to end up with an alcoholic partner. Many people with this attachment style tend to be “fixers” that distract themselves with fixing problems. Trying to fix their alcoholic partner and managing their drinking becomes their purpose in the relationship, allowing them to avoid vulnerability.

Fearful avoidants can also tolerate the unpredictable inconsistency of being with an alcoholic better than most since they operate in a push-pull dynamic that mirrors the chaotic ups and downs of alcoholism.

Alcohol Use Among People With Secure Attachment

As you can probably guess from the name, people with secure attachment style are the least likely to use alcohol excessively because they have low anxiety and low avoidance. People with secure attachment tend to feel comfortable relying on others and being relied on. When something goes wrong, they're more likely to reach out for support or talk it through.

The 2014 Wyrzykowska study involving 94 people in treatment for alcohol dependence and 94 people without alcohol dependence found that the group with alcohol dependence scored significantly lower on secure attachment. The authors note that people with alcohol dependence rarely showed a secure connection to others. Other studies they cite found secure attachment in only a minority of people with alcohol dependence.

Secure attachment doesn't make anyone immune to problem drinking. But having reliable ways to cope with stress, including other people, leaves less room for alcohol to take on that job.

How to Address Attachment Style Issues to Ensure Alcohol Use Doesn’t Become Excessive

If you identify with an attachment style that increases the likelihood of excessive drinking or using alcohol as a coping mechanism, you’re not doomed to a drinking problem. Attachment styles may seem hardwired into us, but they aren’t fixed. A person with anxious or avoidant attachment can become more secure, and drinking patterns can change along with it.

You can start by:

• Noticing the triggers. Do you reach for a drink after conflict, rejection or a silent evening at home? Naming the emotion underneath is a start.

• Look at when and why you drink, not just how much.

• Talk to a therapist. Therapy, especially approaches that address relationship patterns alongside substance use, can help. The Wyrzykowska authors also note that people with insecure attachment may struggle to trust a therapist at first, which is normal and workable.

• Involve your partner when it's safe to. Since these patterns play out between two people, couples-focused support can help as well.

If alcohol is causing problems in your life or relationships, you don't have to work it out alone. At Choose Your Horizon, we help people understand what's driving their drinking and build a path forward.

Reach out to learn more about our programs or take the Alcohol Use Assessment to get personalized feedback by answering a few questions.