Social anxiety disorder symptoms were associated with a substantial increase in hazards for severe AUD, possibly attesting to vulnerability to high levels of alcohol-related problems once drinking is initiated and/or to strong negatively reinforcing effects of alcohol use on social anxiety. Prior work suggests that social anxiety may be uniquely, and possibly causally, related to AUD (Torvik et al., 2019), and that it is more strongly related to alcohol dependence or related problems than to DSM-IV abuse or consumption (Buckner et al., 2008; Schry & White, 2013).
