Teenagers’ use of alcohol, drugs can be carried into adulthood

Despite the perception that people give up their hard-drinking, drug-taking teenage ways by middle age, it’s only an illusion for the youngest baby boomers. Big indulgers in high school tended to stay that way.

“The foundation for later substance use is set for most people by the time they finish high school,” said Alicia Merline, a University of Michigan psychologist who studied men and women who graduated from high school between 1977 and 1983.

She and her colleagues found that those who drank heavily in school were three times more likely to drink heavily at age 35 than those who were high school teetotalers.

Those who had tried marijuana in school were eight times more likely to be using marijuana at 35 than those who hadn’t tried it by graduation.

The report was published in January’s American Journal of Public Health. It was based on responses from 7,541 people to the Monitoring the Future study conducted at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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Jane E. Allen