You know that kid that you always sat behind and copied off of in class? The one with an exceptional grasp on the three R's? The one who got straight A's on every report card? Is that kid more likely to become addicted to drugs? One would think that intelligent kids would be apt to make smarter decisions concerning using or trying drugs or alcohol.
But a recent study performed by British scientists suggests that this isn't necessarily true.
A Reversal of Expectations In this study, from Time.
com called, 'Smarter Kids Are Smart Enough to Avoid Alcohol and Drugs, Right?' researchers followed 3,000 healthy identical or fraternal twins in Finland for decades, focusing on the groups who had significant differences in verbal development as kids and who also had varied drinking behaviors as adults.
The twins who spoke their first words earlier or who began reading earlier were twice as likely as their co-twin to be drinking more at age 18 and also were four times as likely to get drunk at least once a month.
This is not the first instance of evidence to point to this conclusion.
In 2011, British researchers found that women who were in the top third of the IQ range when tested in elementary school were more than twice as likely as those scoring in the bottom third to have used marijuana or cocaine by age 30; for men, the top-ranked boys were almost 50% more likely to have taken amphetamine and 65% more likely to have used ecstasy by adulthood.
These studies, however, only indicate that smarter kids might be more likely to TRY drugs or alcohol at a younger age.
But as for addiction, the consensus is still that less intelligent people are more vulnerable, with weaker educations and the damaging effects of poverty likely to blame for this.
Also theorized is that with lower intelligence comes a deficiency in ability to drink or use in moderation.
Similar is the theory that intelligent people are less likely to become addicted because they know when to stop and where to draw the line between social drinking and alcoholism.
The Chemistry While this may be true with alcohol, which, when ingested, leaves the body typically within 24 hours, this does not hold true for drugs.
As drugs are fat-soluble, they stay in the body long after the high goes away.
Not to exclude alcohol from the list of drugs that one could get addicted to, but it is true nevertheless that an individual's own volition plays a bigger part in getting addicted to alcohol than with other substances.
With other substances, once the high wears off and the individual hits a low, he is tempted to use again, partially because he wants to achieve that high again and also because the substance is inevitably still in his body.
Drug use tends to thus grab ahold of one and not let go after a few uses.
Alcohol, however, can be ingested in moderation for one's entire life without being addicted to it.
When one starts to use alcohol as an escape, that's where one loses track of the concept of moderation.
It can be argued along these lines that this type of person is generally, but definitely not always, less successful and less active in life and, quite possibly, less educated.
But the fact that those with stronger foundations for learning were more likely to try drugs that those with weaker foundations stresses the importance of educating our youth on the specific ramifications of drug use.
A good education is still very important, but so is simply being educated on the right data.