The use of alcohol and illicit drugs helps to reduce stress.

The retrieved papers present a dual perspective: multiple studies (such as 1, 5, 9, 10) demonstrate that individuals subjectively perceive and use alcohol and illicit drugs as coping mechanisms for stress and negative affect. However, more rigorous causal and longitudinal designs (such as the Mendelian Randomization study in Paper 8 and the longitudinal evaluation in Paper 0) challenge the notion that alcohol effectively alleviates these psychiatric conditions or operates as a reliable direct stress-reducer, revealing that correlations are often confounded or that substances fail to provide true stress-relief benefits. This creates a contested balance where subjective coping motivation is common, but objective efficacy in stress reduction is heavily undercut by higher-quality causal evidence.