A recent study reveals teenagers who consume alcohol alone have chances of developing greater alcohol dependency and mental disorders in young adulthood.
The study was jointly conducted by the researchers in Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The study reveals how solitary drinking in teen age can affect people in later life.
Drinking with friends at social gatherings or public places is what most teenagers indulge in. But there are teenagers who tend to isolate themselves from the crowd and drink alone. A recent study published in the latest issue of the journal of Clinical Psychological Science, reveals that teens who drink alone tend to develop drinking disorders and have emotional problems in later life.
The findings are based on two rounds of test conducted on 709 adolescents from Pittsburgh Adolescent Alcohol Research Centre. In the first test, the volunteers aged between 12 and 18 were assessed on their drinking habits and alcohol consumption in the past year. The same participants were queried about their alcohol usage when they turned 25.
Around 39 percent of the participants, who were into unaccompanied drinking in their teens, were detected with greater addiction for alcohol at the age of 25.
It was found their dependency on alcohol in the teens was a coping mechanism to deal with negative emotions. According to the researchers, such teenagers are one and half times more likely to be alcohol dependent compared to their peers.
"We're learning that kids who drink alone tend to do so because they're feeling lonely, are in a bad mood, or had an argument with a friend," said Kasey Creswell, the lead author of the study, in a press release. "They seem to be using alcohol to self-medicate as a way to cope with negative emotions and, importantly, this pattern of drinking places them at high risk to escalate their alcohol use and develop alcohol problems in adulthood."
Earlier studies have shown excessive drinking leads to psychological disorders in later life and lone drinking at an early age should trigger concern.
