<p>[Smart</a> kids are more likely to be heavy drinkers - Times Online](<a href=“The Times & The Sunday Times: breaking news & today's latest headlines”>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/expert_advice/article5332469.ece)</p>
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<p>Yikes! Let the CC folks try to debunk this one. I’m truly hoping there are all kinds of holes in this finding.</p>
<p>There weren’t a lot of details on the methodology but it could simply be a case of more intelligent students going to college at a higher rate where there is easier access to alcohol and a drinking culture. That’s what I would perceive in the US given drinking ages and the alcohol culture. I don’t know what the drinking age and alcohol culture is in the UK.</p>
<p>While I’d be willing to believe it, for a number of reasons, this seems like it’s talking about correlation, rather than causation.</p>
<p>Interesting, but it’s only one study. I know a number heavy (problem) drinkers whose intelligence ranges from normal to way above average, and what they have in common is that they began using alcohol pretty darn early (in their early teens) and that usage became the defining factor in their lives. I should say I also know two who then went to AA and into recovery in a serious way and now abtain completely (they have substituted things like marathon running and so on for drinking) but the rest live to drink.</p>
<p>They are obviously confusing cause and effect. Drinking makes those kids smart.</p>
<p>At last! A good excuse!! 
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<p>addiction does seem to have a strong genetic link- but to say that those people who abuse substances are more intelligent than those who do not?
lol</p>
<p>I found another drinking study from UK
[Give</a> It Up Guys: Women Are Smarter Than You Even When They Drink - Digital Journal: Your News Network](<a href=“http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/263457]Give”>http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/263457)</p>
<p>Five kids in my family … four with very high IQ’s … one with a decidedly average IQ … guess who has the alcohol problem in our family? Yup, the average one.</p>
<p>This is nonsense. Every drunk I’ve known has been someone who was poorly educated and not very smart. I’ve not known one high IQ/highly educated drunk.</p>
<p>^^^ You’ve not heard of Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald?
Alcholism can’t be pinned on something as esoteric as IQ. Just like depression can’t, you know. It’s just an accretion of things…from genetics to environment, IQ is the least likely of culprits. :)</p>
<p>“Correlation does not imply causation.” People whose parents are dead are more likely to have lower back pain, but loss of a parent does not give you a backache.</p>
<p>I am with BCEagle91. I would guess that the drinking culture at British universities is a factor here. The British kids who were smartest at age 10 were more likely to go to a university, and kids who spent a number of years at a university were more likely to be heavy drinkers at age 30.</p>
<p>I can believe that they found this correlation in the sample of 8000+ British kids they studied. The headline (and mostly likely the journal article) says Smart Kids are More Likely to be Heavy Drinkers. I don’t believe that being smart causes you to be more likely to be a heavy drinker and I would guess that the journal article’s authors didn’t believe that, either.The article is in the American Journal of Public Health.</p>
<p>We don’t know if this correlation would show up in a sample of 8000 U.S. 1978 10-year-olds observed at age 30 in 2008, or even if it would show up in a different sample of British kids.</p>
<p>I have known many, many very intelligent and well-educated people over the course of my life/career who abuse alcohol. I also believe there is a lot of alcohol abuse at the highly selective colleges.</p>
<p>My sister is a real idiot and does not drink. Well I guess I settled that argument.</p>
<p>I would say there is alcohol abuse at all colleges, just more at some than at others, whether selective or not.</p>
<p>Well in defense of all the alcoholics,alcoholism does have a genetic link, and it has been found to be a disease. You are not guaranteed to become an alcoholic, but for instance if you are male and alcoholism is in your paternal lineage, your risk is high.
[Stairway</a> to Recovery: Can Addiction be Cured?](<a href=“http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/addiction/berman/treatment/]Stairway”>http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/addiction/berman/treatment/)</p>
<p>I don’t think it has anything to do with how intelligent you are, and I suspect there are other co-existing factors. It’s true that oftentimes we hear of artists/musicians/writers who struggle with addiction. I also think that in certain circles, it is much easier to mask addiction to alcohol. For example, when my daughter was in prep school, we knew families in social circles that usually I would not know to that extent otherwise.
I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who was actually an alcoholic, but I did notice that alcohol was consumed at a higher rate than I would have predicted. At school functions ( private school), it was freely available at dinners hosted by the school, & I imagine that was one reason why the auctions were so successful. 
I did notice people who drank enough that I was concerned, something I wouldn’t have expected at open house functions- and yes these were sometimes brilliant people-</p>
<p>I find this correlation of high IQ to high drinking pretty erroneous since most kids born to Asian immigrants do not drink despite high IQs.</p>
<p>Pharmagal. My guess would be that it is more a cultural issue . Some cultures are more known than others to have a drinking culture(does not mean of course that all in that country either do or do not drink but there are some cultures that tend to drink more than others). I do believe that heredity/genetics play a part in some being able to handle alcohol better than others.</p>
<p>In any case, it is an interesting question, that’s for sure. I think it would be interesting for an addiction researcher to study a very large group of alcoholics (a large sample, in other words) by looking at their IQs. My guess is that the graph of their IQs would be like a graph of the IQs of any group: some in the lower range, a lot in the middle, some in the higher. Of course, I am not an addiction or IQ expert (or, thank heaven, an alcoholic!) so perhaps such a study couldn’t be done accurately, because perhaps alcoholism has a negative impact on a person’s IQ (we do know that IQ is malleable and can go up and down). </p>
<p>I do believe and think it has been proven that addiction (alcoholism, etc.) does have some genetic basis.</p>
<p>I absolutely believe there is a genetic basis. I just don’t think that the genetic link correlates with IQ.</p>
<p>Have you ever noticed the LOW incidence of alcoholism amongst people whose ancestors originated along the shores of the Mediterranean? These cultures have had alcohol for thousands of years. Over time the proclivity for alcoholism was bread(sp) out. In contrast, other cultures e.g. northern Europeans, Africans, Native Americans, have only been exposed to alcohol for a relatively short amount of time, and their incidence of alcoholism is much higher.</p>