BACKGROUND:The aim of the current study was to examine the associations between the specific mindfulness skills of observing, describing, awareness, nonjudgment, and nonreactivity in terms of anxiety sensitivity (AS), distress tolerance (DT), and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) among college students with problematic alcohol use. METHODS: Participants were 202 (69.3% male; Mage = 18.96, SD = 2.24, range = 18-45 years) undergraduate college students with problematic alcohol use who completed self-report measures for course credit. RESULTS: Results indicated that after controlling for the effects of gender, smoking status, marijuana use status, and negative affectivity, greater use of the mindfulness skill of observing was associated with higher AS, greater describing was associated with lower AS and higher DT, greater nonjudgment was associated with lower AS and IU and higher DT, and greater nonreactivity was associated with increased DT. Awareness did not significantly predict any of the examined risk factors. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that specific mindfulness skills are associated with a greater tolerance of physiological, emotional, and uncertain states. An important next step will be to examine whether mindfulness skills are associated with decreased problematic alcohol use due to improvements in these anxiety-related risk factors.