* Adolescents who drink alcohol, smoke and/or use drugs tend to have peers who do the same.
* New research findings suggest that girls may be more influenced by their friends’ drinking.
* Having opposite-sex friends who drink is also associated with increased drinking for both genders.

Adolescents who drink alcohol, smoke and/or use drugs tend to have peers who do the same. A new study that looked at other factors which may moderate the influence of peers has found that gender, and gender of friends, can also affect this association.

Results are published in the December issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

“Several studies have found that peer drinking has more of an influence on an adolescent’s drinking than his or her own parent’s drinking,” said Danielle Dick, corresponding author for the study. Now at

Virginia Commonwealth University, Dick was an assistant professor at

Washington University,

St. Louis when this study was conducted.

“We wanted to more closely examine the role that gender may also play, because even though there are profound differences that occur in development between girls and boys during adolescence, little is known about how influences on alcohol use may differ between the sexes during this developmental period,” said Dick.

Researchers used data from a population-based, longitudinal twin study of behavioral development and health-risk factors from

Finland (n= ~ 4,700 individuals). They analyzed the association between friendship characteristics and alcohol use, testing for interaction with gender and gender of friends. They also used the twin structure of the data to examine the extent to which similarity in drinking behaviors between adolescents and their friends was due to shared genetic and/or environmental pathways.

“Our findings suggest that girls may be more susceptible to their friends’ drinking,” said Dick, “and that having opposite-sex friends who drink is also associated with increased drinking, for both sexes. Furthermore, genetically based analyses suggest that the correlation between adolescent/friend drinking was largely attributable to shared environmental effects across genders. This suggests that the association between an adolescent’s alcohol use and that of his or her peers is not merely a reflection of genetic influences on the adolescent’s own alcohol use that cause them to select drinking peers.”

In other words, said Kenneth J. Sher, Curators’ Professor in the department of psychological sciences at the

University of

Missouri, the influence of risk factors associated with the peer network appeared to be stronger in girls.

“Those who design and implement prevention approaches should take gender into account as a potentially critical moderator of prevention outcomes,” said Sher. “We need to better understand the ‘why’ of sex differences in risk in order to shed important light on the nature of risk processes. For example, are girls potentially more ‘vulnerable’ to peer-related effects at this stage of life because they are likely to be more intimately involved with their closest friends than are boys” That is, does gender simply serve as a ‘proxy’ of a variable such as intimacy or closeness during this time of their lives?’”

Both Dick and Sher cautioned parents to be very aware of their child’s friends, as well as how they spend their time together. “This awareness,” said Dick, “is particularly important for girls, and when the friendship group consists of members of the opposite sex.”

Sher suggested that future studies look more closely at how friendship networks change over time, and how that may affect alcohol use among peers.

“These investigations need to carefully consider the ages being studied because the extent that alcohol use is deviant changes rapidly over the course of adolescence, the relative importance of genetic and environmental factors appears to change, and the degree of gender differences in risk factors might also vary as a function of age,” he said.

This study was reported in the Science Daily on November 7, 2007. The study shows that cognitive behavioral therapy significantly improved depression in adolescent patients that participated in the study.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 7, 2007) — The antidepressant fluoxetine combined with cognitive behavioral therapy appears as effective for treating depression among teens who also have substance use disorders as among those without substance abuse problems, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. “Adolescents with substance use disorders (SUDs) have higher rates of depression (15 percent to 24 percent) than adolescents in the general population,” the authors write as background information in the article. “Comorbid [co-occuring] depression is also associated with more severe substance abuse, poorer drug treatment outcomes and higher relapse rates.”Paula D. Riggs, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Colorado Denver conducted a randomized controlled trial of the antidepressant fluoxetine in 126 teens (average age 17) who met diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder, lifetime conduct disorder and at least one substance abuse disorder other than tobacco. The adolescents were randomly assigned to receive either 20 milligrams of fluoxetine daily or placebo, along with cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of psychotherapy addressing the way individuals currently think and act rather than past events. The cognitive behavior therapy was focused on substance abuse rather than depression.At the end of the 16-week treatment period, fluoxetine combined with cognitive behavioral therapy improved the teens’ scores on one of the two depression scales used. There were no significant differences on the other depression scale or in substance use or conduct disorder symptoms between the fluoxetine and placebo groups.The results, the authors write, “indicate that, in the context of cognitive behavior therapy (substance abuse treatment), co-occurring depression may improve or remit without antidepressant pharmacotherapy. However, if depression does not appear to be improving early in the course of substance treatment, fluoxetine treatment should be considered, even if adolescents are not yet abstinent, with weekly monitoring of treatment adherence, substance use, adverse effects and target symptom response.”

The Collier County Florida Sheriff’s Office of Criminal Intelligence recently circulated a bulletin describing a “new drug” called Jenkem.

Jenkem is far from a new drug and was originated in Africa and other third world countries. It is made by fermenting raw sewage in order to create an inhalant. According to the Sheriff’s bulletin, it is gaining popularity in American schools.

Jenkem is a homemade substance which consists of fecal matter and urine. The substances are place in a bottle or jar and covered most commonly with a balloon. The container is then placed in a sunny area for several hours or days until fermented. The contents of the container separate and release a gas, which is captured in the balloon. Inhaling the gas is said to have a euphoric high similar to cocaine but also creates strong hallucinations of times past.

Once ingested, the onset of the high takes approximately 10 seconds with the most severe hallucinations happening in approximately 20 minutes. Several articles indicate that the subject immediately passes out after ingesting the gas then regains a magical/hallucinogenic state within seconds of regaining consciousness. The effects may last for several hours or days. All of the subjects who used the Jenkem disliked the taste of raw sewage in their mouth and the fact that the taste continued for several days.

This is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in the addiction arena. It gives more weight to the argument that addiction is a brain dysfunction, a disconnection between the thinking and the emotional brain. If the sewage taste in your mouth for several days alone is not an effective deterrent, you are probably not thinking.

The story below came from a study at

Emory

University that looks at cues that trigger drug use in people addicted to crack cocaine.  Using virtual reality they recreated a crack house complete with people using, selling and clearly under the influence.  The triggers set off the brain circuits that cause craving and lead to using the drug of choice.  The point of the study is for the addict to identify the peak in the craving and when it decreases.  At the moment of decreased craving the researchers sound a tone that will be used in the future to signal the brain to decrease the cravings when the addict is confronted with real life triggers.  The tone can be accessed at any time from the addict’s cell phone after he completes the virtual reality therapy.  This VR therapy can also be used to test the efficacy of pharmacological treatments and psychotherapeutic interventions. 

Eve Bender As with other drug dens, people in the “virtual” crack house buy and use crack cocaine and trade sex for drugs. Occasionally, the police burst through the door and make arrests. But the virtual crack house is safe. Not only that, it’s therapeutic, according to Barbara Rothbaum, Ph.D., who is an associate professor of psychiatry and director of the Trauma and Anxiety Recovery Program at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. The program built a virtual environment to study the cues that trigger drug use in people addicted to crack cocaine. “With substance use disorders, it’s dangerous and unethical to present patients with real cues—with virtual reality, we can do that in a controlled treatment setting,” Rothbaum told Psychiatric News.