A nine-year RAND Corporation study finds that adolescents who drink, smoke cigarettes, or use illegal drugs while alone tend to use more of the substances and to have more serious consequences than their peers who only drank, smoked, or used while in the company of others.
However, solitary users were not as a rule socially isolated. Solitary users spent more time going to parties and dating than kids whose alcohol or drug use was always social. They just didn't share their addictive substances or disclose the extent of their use to peers.
The study followed more than 6,000 children in California and Oregon from 8th grade to age 23. It appears in the December issue of the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. A news summary is here.
1 comment:
These findings caught me off guard. I would have thought that youth who drink, smoke, or use illegal drugs would do so while in the company of their peers. This reinforces the importance of research :-)
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