Millennials are the first generation of people to grow up with the Internet and with cell phones; the digital era is their era. They are foremost multitaskers. It’s nothing to find a Millennial in a busy coffee shop with iPod ear buds in place, music turned up, seated in front of a laptop, working on a spreadsheet due first thing in the morning. Maybe he is drinking a complicated espresso order, but it’s also likely our young person is working while drinking an imported beer – something dark and bitter most older people have never heard of – one after another.

This Millennial, we’ll call him Mark, was born to parents who both went to college. After college, they married and planned the number of children they would have, Mark among them. It was a time of legal abortions and safe birth control options, so Mark was a happy, planned-for pregnancy – a wanted child. Mark and his peers were raised to believe they were “special,” unique snowflakes. At tee-ball and little league, every child in Mark’s generation likely received a trophy just for participating. It was the era of the Self-Esteem Movement in parenting, and Mark and his generation was taught they could be anything they wanted to be when they grew up; nothing was standing in their way.

When Mark did grow up, however, college tuition had become much more expensive than it was when his parents were in school, and the economy and housing markets had tanked. The help his parents had planned to offer, they could no longer afford to give. Despite federal student loans, Mark couldn’t afford to go to the colleges of his choice. The cost of living had dramatically risen, too. When his parents were young, it took one person with a high school diploma to achieve a middle-class income, but today, two college-educated earners must work to afford the same lifestyle. Mark’s expectations that he could be anything he wanted hit a cement wall. Reality was nowhere near what he’d been led all his childhood to believe.

Rise of Anxiety

When Gen X was coming of age, depression was the mental illness du jour; Elizabeth Wurtzel and her memoir Prozac Nation sufficiently sealed the zeitgeist. Today, however, anxiety has surpassed depression as the leading mental health concern. Millennials are raised to believe they can have and be anything; their egos are stroked and their self-esteem boosted at every turn. But when adulthood hits, reality smashes around them. They face surmounting concerns about the facts of life, and it isn’t pretty. If Gen X was considered the slacker generation, Gen Y might be called a generation of cynics.

Jean Twenge, PhD, the first to truly examine the wealth of data that exists on generational studies explains that “[t]oday’s young people face a competitive workplace and the economic squeeze created by sky-high housing prices and rapidly accelerating healthcare costs. After a childhood of buoyancy, [they are] working harder to get less.” The Daily Mail reports that 3 million 20-to-34-year-olds now live with their parents due to the unstable economy.

Anxiety Leading to Self-Medication

While researchers point to addiction as frequently having a genetic component, a strong self-medication hypothesis exists in the addiction arena. Self-medication is the use of mood altering substances – alcohol, prescription drugs, or illicit drugs – to assuage the uncomfortable symptoms of anxiety or depression. When self-medication is the cause of substance abuse, the underlying issue of anxiety or depression can be overlooked. It’s important to recognize in these circumstances that substance use is a symptom belonging to a mental health disorder, rather than simply being an issue of addiction alone. In the case of Millennials, more research needs to be done to determine their rates of addiction related mental illness, but the rise of anxiety in this generation and its link to addiction is clear.

The lives of Millennials are very different from the lives of the Baby Boomers who most often raised them. When Boomers look at this group of young people, they often see a group of individuals intent on staying young forever. They’ve been called “adultescents” for their video gaming habits, their unwillingness to marry, start families, or save for a down payment on a home after college like their parents did. While this generation appears to have a protracted adolescence it may not be entirely their fault. The adults who raised them taught them they deserved all this freedom, but failed to prepare them for a world that would refuse to give it to them. Our children may well be unique, special snowflakes, insofar as there are 7 billion special snowflakes. What’s important is that we recognize the uniqueness of the increased anxiety disorders and its attendant capacity for addiction this generation faces, and be willing to meet them where they are.

Background Information

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism periodically reports statistics that reflect the impact of underage drinking and excessive drinking in American college students. According to the most recently compiled statistics, almost 600,000 college students sustain alcohol-related injuries each year, and roughly 1,800 students die each year as a result of these injuries. Almost 700,000 yearly alcohol-related non-sexual assaults occur among college students, in addition to almost 100,000 cases of alcohol-related sexual assault and/or rape. Every year, more than 100,000 college students engage in sex while being too drunk to know if they gave consent for sexual activity. Essentially all large colleges and universities in the U.S. have health programs designed to inform their students about the manifold dangers associated with both excessive alcohol consumption and underage drinking. However, many students don’t take advantage of these programs; in addition, many students avoid seeking help from available on-campus resources when they develop alcohol-related problems.

Standard Testing Procedures

A standard tool used to detect drinking behaviors that can lead to alcohol abuse or addiction (in college students or any other teen or adult population) is the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, known popularly as AUDIT. During an AUDIT session, the test taker answers a series of 10 multiple-choice questions designed to identify specific behaviors that indicate a dysfunctional pattern of alcohol use. Examples of these questions include “How often do you have a drink containing alcohol?” “How often do you have six or more drinks on one occasion?” and “How often during the last year have you failed to do what was normally expected of you because of drinking?”

Answers to each AUDIT question range in value from zero to four; answers with a value of zero indicate the lowest risks for alcohol abuse or addiction, while answers with a value of four indicate the highest risks for these problems. Anyone who reaches a point total of eight or higher after answering all 10 of the test’s questions almost certainly engages in a dangerous pattern of alcohol consumption.

Use of Social Media

Lack of participation in alcohol education efforts and lack of self-reporting of alcohol-related problems create significant obstacles for any effort to identify problem drinking in college students. In the study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, a team of researchers tested the validity of social media site monitoring as an alternative method for identifying dangerous drinking patterns in this population. In the first phase of the study, they selected public profiles from more than 300 students at two universities, and, after gaining consent for participation in the study, scanned those profiles for references to alcohol use.

Based on the content of their profiles, the participating students were then broken down into three categories: non-displayers (people with no references to alcohol use in their profiles), displayers (people with some alcohol references in their profiles) and I/PD displayers (people whose profiles contained alcohol-related references indicating involvement in intoxication or problem drinking). Roughly 64 percent of the students qualified as non-displayers; slightly less than 20 percent qualified as displayers, while slightly more than 16 percent qualified as I/PD displayers.

Next, the authors of the study asked the participating students to take the AUDIT exam. About 75 percent of these students agreed to do so. Roughly 58 percent of the students identified as I/PD displayers based on their social media profiles also qualified as at-risk drinkers based on the results of their AUDIT exams. Only 38 percent of students identified as displayers met the same criteria based on their AUDIT results, while only 23 percent of non-displayers met the at-risk AUDIT criteria. Interestingly, college-age males identified as I/PD displayers clearly had much higher AUDIT scores than males identified as non-displayers, while college-age females in these two categories had roughly equal AUDIT scores.

Significance

The authors of the study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine believe that their findings demonstrate the usefulness of public social media profiles in identifying college students with drinking problems who might otherwise fall through the cracks. Health officials who use this method to seek out at-risk students will probably get the best, most highly targeted results by searching for keywords strongly linked to intoxication or other forms of problem drinking.

A good many students never see graduation day, and excessive alcohol use could have something to do with it. People in general have a problem regulating their alcohol consumption, regardless of whether they’re at a frat house party with 200 other co-eds or retired and drinking alone in front of a television. But researchers are narrowing in on the relationship between booze and what drives today’s youth to imbibe.

Researchers set out to test how the brain reacts to alcohol cues in college students. By using pictures of alcoholic beverages, they were able to take the MRI data and correlate a response to these images.

Cognitive response drives decision-making in young adults. Some researchers believe that binge drinking in late adolescence damages the brain’s ability to make good decisions later in life, which is why determining what drives a person to drink is so important. This study found that increased alcohol use during college negatively affects the adolescent brain.

In the test, first-semester college students were asked to press a button as fast as they could when images of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages appeared on a monitor. The MRI tracked the brain’s response to each image. The findings, according to the report, showed that students had to use more of their brain that uses cognitive control to overcome the alcohol-associated images as they were instructed to respond to the non-alcoholic images. The tests continued into the second semester of college, and it is believed that the continued use of alcohol caused there to be a decreased amount of connectivity between cognitive regions of the brain.

The study indicates that connections among brain regions involved in emotion processing and cognitive control may change with increased exposure to alcohol and alcohol-related cues. Those connections also may influence other parts of the brain, such as those still-developing regions responsible for students’ decision-making and judgment abilities.

We now know that addiction is a chronic brain disorder and not simply a behavioral problem involving too much alcohol, drugs, gambling or sex. When people see compulsive and damaging behaviors in friends or family members, they often focus only on the behaviors as the problem. However, these outward behaviors are actually manifestations of an underlying disease that involves various areas of the brain, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

This brain disease model of addiction is now the most widely accepted theory about the nature of addiction. This theory doesn’t let users off the hook, but rather explains how certain drugs interact with the human brain, leading some individuals to develop an addiction disease.

The disease model did several important things to the study and treatment of addiction. First, it explained why addictive substances do not affect everyone in the same way; for example, why the majority of people who consume alcohol will not become alcoholics. It also placed addiction treatment and recovery under the umbrella of medical care, encouraging the treatment of addicts as patients rather than malefactors. Lastly, the addiction model went a long way toward explaining why certain drugs have addiction potential, and why others have little or no potential for addiction.

The Disease Model of Addiction

The brain disease theory of addiction states that individuals become addicted to certain substances when the chemicals introduced to the brain by that substance succeed in rewriting the brain’s chemistry. Specifically, these substances rewrite the chemistry of the limbic system, which is the part of the brain responsible for mood and reward feedback. This change in brain chemistry causes the brain to expect certain levels of addictive substances to be in the system in order for it to function properly. Without the substance to which they have become addicted, individuals will experience severe cravings and go into withdrawal as the brain struggles to function without the drug.

With an addiction, the presence of a certain substance in the brain becomes the new “normal.” The limbic system has been reprogrammed to regard the presence of the addictive substance and the body’s reaction to it as the status quo, and cravings can only be satisfied temporarily until the substance is metabolized and its presence in the brain once again drops. Addicts are no longer able to choose not to use, because their bodies now rely on the substances in order to function properly.

Addictive Drugs and the Limbic System

As the “pleasure center” of the brain, it is easy to regard the limbic system as frivolous component of our central nervous system. However, the limbic system is actually critical to our survival. The purpose of the limbic system is to identify elements that promote our survival, and to encourage us to continue to seek out those elements with the release of dopamine.

Because the limbic system is the primary home of the addiction phenomenon, it makes sense that addictive drugs are those that affect the limbic system more rapidly and more directly than other substances. Highly addictive drugs quickly cause a rapid surge of dopamine to be released by the limbic system, in larger amounts than those to which the brain is accustomed. Certain substances can cause the release of up to 10 times the amount of dopamine than the brain normally experiences.

Since dopamine is the chemical that makes us feel happy, individuals are often tempted to use such drugs more than once, even before they become addicted. However, dopamine is a chemical that our brains are naturally programmed to seek out, and rapid spikes in the levels of dopamine in the system quickly convinces the brain that this substance is an important part of survival. Furthermore, the extremely high levels of dopamine released cause the brain to prioritize. At that point, the addicted brain is no longer seeking pleasure—it is seeking normalcy.

The depiction of substance use in movies is a different type of promotion than focusing on a high-end pair of shoes or a jewelry design. Instead, when product placement involves cigarettes or alcohol, the appearance could be connected with behaviors that can significantly impact a viewer’s health.

A recent study examined this influence, looking at how movies that depict alcohol consumption and alcohol-related items might be associated with levels of drinking in the teens who watch them.

The study, conducted by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School, involved more than 6,500 teens who were asked about the movies they had seen and the alcohol they had consumed.

The participants, who were 10 to 14 years old, were asked to report on drinking behaviors in addition to discussing the factors that led them to their decisions about drinking.

The interviews with the teens lasted for two years. The researchers found that there were many factors that led to a decision to drink, including whether parents drank at home and whether alcohol was available in the home. These same factors, however, did not appear to have any influence on binge drinking.

The factors that contributed to the likelihood of binge drinking were rebelliousness, involvement in a social group where friends drank, owning branded alcohol merchandise and exposure to alcohol in movies.

The overall findings showed that teens who viewed films that featured alcohol were twice as likely to participate in alcohol consumption. Over the two years of the interviews, the number of teens who drank rose sharply, from 11 percent  to 25 percent. In addition, the number of binge drinkers increased from 4 percent to 13 percent.

The study’s findings also showed that drinking by the protagonist in the film was not the only connection to teen drinking. Even the use of indirect portrayals of alcohol was associated with increased teen consumption, such as the use of bottles of alcohol or glasses in a scene.

“Product placement in movies is forbidden for cigarettes in the USA, but is legal and commonplace for the alcohol industry, with half of Hollywood films containing at least one alcohol brand appearance, regardless of film rating,” the study’s authors wrote.

They point out that the depiction of smoking in movies has fallen since it became a public health issue and the subject of industry monitoring, and suggest that alcohol in movies “may deserve similar emphasis.”

Using Adults to Obtain Alcohol

The most common way in which underage people obtain alcohol is through interaction with an adult of legal age. These adults may be their parents, other adult relative, friends, or even strangers. What motivates an adult to give alcohol to underage youths? There’s a range of motivations, from hoping to discourage future out-of-control drinking to drawing a profit.

While it is still technically illegal, many parents allow their children to drink moderately in their company – a beer, or a glass of wine with dinner. These parents may believe that drinking laws in the United States are unnecessarily restrictive, and/or hope to remove the novelty of drinking while instilling responsible drinking habits. It is rare for parents to knowingly allow their children to drink without supervision, or to provide them with alcohol for that purpose, but it does happen. Some parents hope to build a rapport with their children and their children’s peers by giving them alcohol.

Some underage drinkers will approach adults outside liquor or grocery stores and ask  for alcohol. Some adults, particularly younger adults, are sympathetic to teenagers who want to drink with friends or at a party. Other adults may simply be willing to abet underage drinking in exchange for a commission.

Some adults – often older friends or relatives – are willing to provide alcohol for underage individuals because they believe that it will be safer for the youths get alcohol from someone they can trust, and drink with supervision.

However, this strategy may not be as effective as those adults would hope. Research has shown that – with or without supervision – the vast majority of drinking that goes on among underage individuals is binge drinking – a practice that is risky for legal and illicit drinkers alike. The fear of being caught and the inability to obtain alcohol any time they choose may motivate underage drinkers to consume alcohol at unsafe speeds and in unsafe quantities.

Obtaining Alcohol Independently

There are also ways that teenagers manage to secure alcohol without the complicity of adults.

Teenagers who look mature are sometimes able to buy alcohol themselves. Different stores and different states have varying policies when it comes to checking identification to ensure that buyers are of legal age. Some establishments require individuals of any age to present an ID to prevent their employees from having to make judgment calls about the ages of their customers.

Other establishments leave it to the discretion of their employees to check ID for anyone who might be under 21, making it much more likely that those employees might make a mistake. And at any location, regardless of the official policy, certain employees may fail to be as diligent as they should.

However, it is often both easier and cheaper for teenagers to get alcohol from their homes or the home of a friend. If homes to which they have access have significant quantities and varieties of alcohol on hand, it is often quite easy for teenagers to purloin alcohol without detection.

A Timeline of Social Media

Social media has arrived on the scene and the history of human relationships will never be the same. With the introduction of sites like Friendster in 2002, quickly replaced in popularity by Facebook in 2003, the mechanisms for “friending,” “following,” “sharing,” and “liking” have virtually exploded. The same year Facebook arrived on the cyber scene, Skype released its video chat interface. With Flickr in ‘04 and YouTube ‘05 – personal photos and videos had never before been so widely seen, shared, or perhaps scrutinized. Twitter launched in 2006, and as much as it is social media, seven years later it is still the go-to source for breaking news. In 2007 Apple’s first iPhone was released – by no means the first smartphone, but among the uncontested leaders in this new pack of social media accessible technology. Then came Foursquare in 2009, followed by the wildly popular Instagram in 2010. Somewhere shortly thereafter, Google rolled out its social media platform, Google+. This timeline roughly brings us to today (although many Web sites and apps have been skipped in the interests of popularity and brevity). What tomorrow will bring is anybody’s guess, but there’s no denying the impact of this human connecting technology.

So how could a growing technology that connects us to others and encourages the exchange of ideas be a bad thing? It turns out, more and more people report feeling “addicted” to social media, feeling a sense of anxiety when they have to be away from it, and periods of heightened anxiety brought about by social comparison – a process people go through in order to more accurately define a sense of self and personal identity. Social comparison is especially strong in the teen years as identity develops, but never before have teenagers had so much access to one another. Comparing everything from attractiveness, number of friends or followers, number of likes on a photo, material possessions, and appearance of happiness – or seeming happiness. One young person with access to a smartphone has no less than a dozen different means of connection through social media sites and the attendant barrage of social comparison they offer. And dozens of social media sites and digital apps exist to promote private messaging or some means for teens to chat, not including texting which they appear to be doing with abandon.

I Have Less Followers = I’m Less Than

In the teenage social hierarchy, fewer “likes” equals less importance, less social economy, less worthiness – the kind everyone can measure. Stefanie Weiss of AskStefanie.com, a mental health consultant working with children and adolescents and their families, told Fox News, “I think kids base their self-worth today on how many followers they have, how many likes they’re getting on their pictures or what comments they’re getting from friends or not getting from other people that they wish that they did.”

Teenagers and younger children with access to social media are more vulnerable than ever to bullying (or encouragement to participate in bullying), but also to the effects of social media on growing identities. Those who are susceptible to feelings of insecurity or anxiety seem to experience a greater flood of feelings of insecurity and unease after time spent on social media, and yet children and teens are no more able than young adults to simply turn off their devices and give themselves a rest. And by and large, parents do not appear to be stepping in to do it for them.

Parenting in a New World

It is important to bear in mind that digital natives – the generation coming of age in a time when the Internet, smartphones, and Facebook are the norm – are still quite young. No parents before the parents of this generation faced similar conundrums about whether to limit social media access, or what the drawbacks of not doing so might be in their children’s lives. We may have been their age once, but we were never their age in the world they are in.

Even studies on the effects of social media access on growing minds have yet to adequately reveal culture-changing truths; the technologies are simply too new. Still, some experts are clear about the impact of technology on society, and do have something to tell us about the rise in anxiety we are witnessing among millennials, or generation Y. “If you are predisposed to anxiety, it seems that the pressures from technology act as a tipping point, making people feel more insecure and more overwhelmed,” says Nicky Lidbetter, CEO of Anxiety UK. What teenager isn’t predisposed to feelings of insecurity or feelings of being overwhelmed?

Anxiety, in fact, is replacing depression as the most common mental health complaint, with anxiety in young people being especially more common than in previous generations. With continued exponential growth in technology expected, it is safe to assume that social media in some variety is here to stay and will only become more accessible to young people. Recognizing how teenagers and younger children are likely to internalize their experiences online, and how they are likely to behave is important. As parents, it is our job to help our children learn to regulate both emotion and behavior until they are able to do so for themselves. It isn’t too much to ask parents to pay closer attention to the social media their children are connected to, and to spend time connecting in-person with their children before anxiety becomes a problem.

Oral Cancer Basics

Strictly speaking, oral cancers only appear in the structures contained inside the mouth; another group of similar cancers, called oropharyngeal cancers, appear in the structures that form the throat. Depending on their specific location, cancers in the tongue or soft palate may be viewed as either oral or oropharyngeal cancers. Roughly 90 percent of all oral and oropharyngeal cancers originate in cells called squamous cells, which form the skin-like surfaces inside the mouth, as well as actual skin on the body’s exterior surfaces. The remaining 10 percent of cancers in the mouth or throat appear in glandular tissue (the saliva glands, adenoids, or lymph glands), or in the melanin-producing pigment cells.

Smoking and the use of smokeless tobacco are the two main factors in the development of oral cancer. In addition to excessive alcohol consumption, other potential contributing factors include maintenance of poor oral and dental hygiene habits, use of medications that diminish normal immune function, the presence of a mouth ulcer, repeated irritation from fillings or dentures, and the presence of an HPV (human papillomavirus) infection in the body. More than 50 percent of all oral cancers are only discovered after they spread to the throat, neck or some other location, the US National Library of Medicine reports. While roughly 90 percent of people whose cancer hasn’t spread (metastasized) will survive for at least five years after diagnosis, very few people with metastasized oral cancer survive this long.

Alcohol’s Effects

Alcohol has toxic effects on a wide variety of cells located throughout the body. Much of this damage occurs when cells (especially those located in the liver) attempt to break down individual alcohol molecules and eliminate them from the body. This breakdown process produces a substance called acetaldehyde, which is also toxic and can increase risks for cancerous changes in exposed cells. Acetaldehyde is especially associated with the onset of cancerous changes in the mouth, throat and other portions of the upper digestive tract, the authors of a study published in 2009 in the journal Addiction report. In turn, people who regularly drink excessive amounts of alcohol have greater chances of developing acetaldehyde-related cancer than moderate drinkers or people who don’t drink at all.

Roughly 75 percent of all people with oral or oropharyngeal cancers regularly consume alcohol in amounts that exceed moderate levels (two drinks a day for men and one drink a day for women). When compared to moderate drinkers or non-drinkers, heavy drinkers develop these cancers anywhere from three to six times as frequently. Specific increases in alcohol-related cancer risks vary according to the part of the mouth or throat under consideration. In all likelihood, risks remain the same regardless of the specific type of alcohol (wine, beer, liquor, etc.) that a given drinker prefers.

Combined Effects of Alcohol Abuse and Smoking

People who drink heavily and smoke moderately are roughly twice as likely to develop oral or oropharyngeal cancer as people who just drink heavily or people who just smoke. Compared to people who don’t smoke or drink at all, people who drink heavily and smoke heavily may have as much as 35 times the risks for mouth or throat cancer. Doctors refer to the combined effects of alcohol and smoking as a comorbid relationship. This type of relationship occurs whenever simultaneous use of two or more substances, or the simultaneous presence of two or more diseases, triggers health outcomes that are significantly worse than use of a single substance or the presence of a single disease could cause on its own.

Considerations

In the past, some researchers have voiced concern that daily use of alcohol-containing mouthwashes could potentially elevate a person’s lifetime risks for the onset of oral or oropharyngeal cancer. However, according to the results of a variety of studies conducted throughout the 2000s, the amount of alcohol contained in these products does not increase cancer risks, even when used regularly.

Now, a new study has found a direct link between binge drinking and an increased risk for type 2 diabetes. Conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, the study finds that binge drinking is directly responsible for increasing insulin resistance, a key step in the development of type 2 diabetes.

Results of the study, which used rodents to test binge drinking’s effect on the onset of type 2 diabetes, were published in January 2013. Researchers concluded that alcohol disrupts the signaling of insulin receptors due to inflammation in the hypothalamus, an area of the brain responsible for metabolic processing.

The insulin receptor is responsible for processing glucose and preventing too much glucose in the blood. When this function fails, the result is insulin resistance, which hinders the body’s ability to use glucose for energy in the cells.

A key indicator that insulin resistance is occurring is a high level of insulin in the bloodstream–a factor that increases the risk for type 2 diabetes, stroke and coronary artery disease.

The senior author of the paper, Christoph Buettner, associate professor of medicine, endocrinology, diabetes and bone disease at the Icahn School of Medicine, said that insulin resistance is a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and that those who binge drink on a regular basis may continue to exhibit insulin resistance for years.

The study evaluated the effects of binge drinking by administering alcohol to rats for three days. A separate group of rats was given the same calorie diet as the first group, but without alcohol.

The rats were then tested for glucose metabolism. The researchers found that even after no alcohol remained in the bloodstream, the rats that were given alcohol at binge drinking levels had higher levels of insulin circulating in their blood compared with the control rats.

The findings suggest that the cause of the circulating insulin was alcohol consumption.

Stress Basics

People under stress develop distinctive chemical changes in their nervous systems and in their hormone-producing endocrine systems. The changes in nervous system function center on the elevated presence of two different neurotransmitting chemicals, called norepinephrine and epinephrine. These chemicals increase the normal level of activity inside involuntary nerves that run from the spinal cord to organs such as the heart, lungs, eyes, intestines and blood vessels. In turn, this increase in involuntary nerve activity produces classic stress responses such as a rapid heartbeat, a rapid breathing rate, and a boost in blood pressure caused by blood vessel narrowing. The changes in endocrine system function center on increased output of a hormone called cortisol; the chemical influence of this hormone produces classic stress responses such as hunger suppression and an increase in the amount of available fuel for the body and brain. The stress response also commonly creates emotional states such as fear and anxiety.

As previously noted, stress and stress reactions are a part of everyday life. However, certain forms of stress have an unusually strong impact on the brain and/or body and create lasting impressions that linger long after the immediate source of stress fades away. Doctors and scientists commonly refer to this type of highly impactful stress as traumatic stress. While specific sources of this type of stress vary from individual to individual, events or situations broadly recognized as traumatic in large portions of the population include physical abuse, sexual abuse, immediate threats of severe violence, death of a loved one, divorce, job loss, moving from one home or city to another, serious or life-threatening illness or injury, exposure to combat or a combat zone, and direct or indirect exposure to terrorism.

Age and Alcohol Use

Alcohol abuse and addiction specialists are keenly aware of the fact that some people start drinking alcohol much earlier in life than others. They’re also keenly aware of the fact that a person’s age when he or she starts drinking can have a variety of lifelong impacts on his or her behavior and health. For these reasons, they frequently use a measurement called “age at first drink” (AFD) to track alcohol use trends in younger children, teens and adults. In a study published in 2011 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, a multi-institution research team examined the links between a person’s AFD and his or her alcohol consumption patterns during moments of stress. They did this by reviewing the results of an ongoing long-term project, called the Mannheim Study of Children at Risk, which has periodically tracked events in the lives of several hundred participants from infancy through adulthood.

The researchers concluded that the younger an individual is at his or her AFD, the greater the chance that he or she will later participate in stress drinking, a pattern of alcohol consumption that centers on heavy drinking during stressful events. They also concluded that the link between AFD and stress drinking holds true for people who experience unusual stresses such as those associated with traumatic events, but not for people who experience commonplace stress during the course of their daily routines. Generally speaking, people who participate in stress drinking don’t increase the number of overall days on which they consume alcohol; instead, they significantly increase their alcohol consumption on the days when they do drink.

Considerations

More than 50 percent of the people participating in the Mannheim Study had an age at first drink between the ages of 13 and 14; the youngest AFD recorded among study participants was age 8. No one knows for sure, but many of the people who start drinking at a relatively early age may come to rely on alcohol during moments of unusual stress because alcohol produces greater feelings of reward in teenage drinkers than it typically produces in adult drinkers. There is some controversy among experts in the field about whether or not an early AFD and stress-related drinking increase a person’s long-term risks for alcoholism. While some researchers believe such a connection likely exists, as of 2013, no scientifically verifiable information fully supports that belief.