Smoking as a coping strategy.

Abstract People in modern society use an ever increasing variety of psychoactive substances to help them cope with the increasing amount of stress they experience in the course of their lives. A survey was undertaken to investigate the role of smoking as a coping strategy and the relationship between smoking, the other coping strategies available, and personality in an undergraduate student population. There seemed to be three distinct subgroups in this population as defined by their preferred coping strategy: those who seek help from their friends when faced by problems, those who seek “expert advice,” and those who attempt to solve their problems alone; often with the use of drugs. Those falling in the third category, that of self-help, were more likely to self-medicate with a wide variety of psychoactive substances. If they were smokers then they smoked more cigarettes and chose their brand on the basis of strength of a cigarette. There was no evidence for different personality types tending to smoke in different situations and no evidence for any link between extraversion or neuroticism and substance use or coping.