News Release

Teens reveal strategies to quit, cut back on drinking

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Center for Advancing Health

Teenagers who want to cut back on how much they drink may stop going to parties where alcohol is served, talk to a friend about drinking or drink “better-tasting” non-alcoholic drinks, according to a new survey of high school students.

Those who want to quit drinking, on the other hand, say they prefer to use counseling and support groups.

A survey conducted by Sandra A. Brown, Ph.D., of the University of California-San Diego and colleagues provides a unique glimpse at how teens cut back or quit drinking, a process that has not been studied as thoroughly as the reasons why teens start drinking, say the researchers.

“Information about the strategies that adolescents consider helpful in modifying their drinking can potentially enhance the effectiveness of our intervention efforts,” Brown and her co-authors say.

Brown and colleagues asked 1,069 high school students, 12 to 18 years old, to list different types of strategies for drinking less and for giving up alcohol completely. The researchers did not prompt students for certain answers, but let them generate their own responses to the questions. They also asked students about what strategies they might use to control their own drinking, as well as strategies they might suggest to a friend.

The researchers then sorted the responses into different types of strategies, like avoiding drinking situations, talking with friends, limiting drinks, participating in other activities such as sports and seeking formal advice from a counselor.

The most frequently recommended strategies were avoiding environments with alcohol and talking with friends or other informal “supports.”

“Teens consider these useful and socially acceptable steps to change their drinking,” Brown says.

Formal counseling was useful for attempts to quit drinking, but not as useful for efforts to cut back, according to the students.

“It is possible that youth associate cessation of drinking with formal treatment such as [Alcoholics Anonymous] or rehabilitation programs because these services typically promote abstinence,” says Brown.

There are also differences in what teens do and what they recommend to friends when it comes to controlling alcohol use, according to the researchers. They found that teens tend to adopt “external” solutions like avoiding alcohol for themselves while proposing more “internal” solutions like considering the negative consequences of drinking to friends.

Since most of the students surveyed in the study were white, strategies to control drinking may differ in other ethnic and cultural groups, the researchers say. They also note that these strategies should be evaluated to see how they affect actual drinking experiences among teens.

###

The study is published in the January 2003 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and was supported by grants from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Center for Substance Abuse Treatment and VA Medical Research Service.

By Becky Ham, staff writer
Health Behavior News Service

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Health Behavior News Service: (202) 387-2829 or www.hbns.org.
Interviews: Contact Leslie Franz, UCSD University Communications at (858) 543-6163.
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research: Contact Mary Newcomb at (317) 278-4765 or mnewcomb@iupui.edu, or visit www.alcoholism-cer.com.


Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.